Dark Energy 2: Trail of Shadows
by Melaradark
Summary: The second installment of the Dark Energy trilogy. Follow the continuing tale of renegade Del Shepard through the events of the second game as she comes to grips with dying, living, and saving the galaxy, all over again.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note:

Well, here we are! The start of installment two of the Dark Energy trilogy. I know that I said it would be called 'Path of Shadows', however as that abbreviates to PoS, I made a minor alteration. It is now called 'Trail of Shadows' because I'd rather have some term of service over a piece of shit any day.

*crickets*

Ok, bad joke. Sorry about that. Anyway, a quick recap for those who read DE1 or for those just wandering in for the first time (really though, if you're just wandering in...read DE1).

My Shepard is female, renegade, potty-mouthed and has a penchant for cigars. She's romantically involved with Liara T'Soni. Kaidan died on Virmire, Wrex lives, the Council was saved, Anderson was elected (which I didn't include in the end of DE1 but do mention in the beginning of DE2). Yah, I know it doesn't sound very renegade broken down like that but...read DE1, it'll make sense. She's so TOTALLY renegade.

I'm inserting an MA warning for the language, crude humor, blood, gore, and all around wicked violence. Also, another warning...if you thought Shepard was bad-tempered and haunted by her demons in the FIRST story, well...prepare to be amazed.

As before this is NOT strictly canon and NOT a regurgitation of the games. You will be able to follow along easily but in several cases I will, very much on purpose, stray from canon completely. I always have a reason for doing so (may not always be a GOOD reason) and it will not detract from the integrity of the plot itself. Also, I write this on the premise that everyone reading it will have played through ME2 at least once. I do not apologize for spoilers and I don't go to great lengths explaining the universe of Mass Effect and its cultures and technology so if you're lost...go play ME and ME2, THEN read this.

I will include some of the downloadable missions in this story, but not all. Lair of the Shadowbroker (obviously) will be in, as will Overlord and things like Kasumi and Zaeed. Firewalker is out. I'm sorry, I hated that mission and would set fire to it after dipping it in a vat of acid if I could.

Yes. I have issues.

My OCs such as Yoh Etat and Gellian Osco will most certainly be back. There may be more OCs as well...it's very likely. I have no idea for sure, of course, because I make this shit up as I go.

As always, feel free to PM me if you have any questions, comments, or constructive criticisms. Also, I am off for the holiday so the next chapter will probably not be up until Tuesday. So have a most wonderful holiday filled with light and good cheer, and I will see you again next week.

Now, brace yourselves. This Shepard is _real_. And she's really about to put her bitch hat on. So sit back, and enjoy the ride.

* * *

><p><strong>Dark Energy 2: Trail of Shadows<strong>

"Don't move."

The tiny glimmer of light crept over her face, before it narrowed its focus between her eyes. A thin cloud of cigar smoke wafted upward, curling through the beam, making it shimmer.

"_I have you now_."

A click. Liara giggled, lowering the tiny palm camera as Shepard glared up from her guitar in mock disapproval.

"Pictures? _Really_?"

"I plan to sell them to all of your adoring fans," Liara replied with a smirk. "I'll make thousands of credits."

"Is that so?"

"Well, _dozens_ of credits at least."

Shepard snorted, setting the guitar aside on the bed. Dressed in her yoga pants and a tank, she looked far more casual than most of the crew ever saw her aboard ship. Propping her cigar on an ashtray beside her bed, she held her hand out. "Give."

Liara retracted the little camera to her chest defensively. "You will not erase them?" she asked warily.

"I won't, but turnabout is fair play. You get pictures of me, I get them of you…_especially_ dressed like _that_. Give."

Liara, who was only wearing her undergarments, smirked a little, then held the camera out. "All right…but if these end up on the extranet I will hit you with a biotic slam so hard you'll think you're a hanar."

"Don't worry, I'm not sharing these with _anyone_," Shepard grinned, aiming the camera and taking a shot of the asari. Looking coy, Liara pursed her lips to blow a kiss, and Shepard took another shot.

"I'm sending _that_ one to Nan," she teased.

"Oh you will _not_," Liara laughed, plucking a pillow off the bed and lobbing it at her. As Shepard tossed it away again, the asari's eyes lit up with an idea.

"Oh, _here_!"

Plucking Shepard's swagman off the nightstand she planted it on her head at a rakish angle, giving a sly little smile. The wolverine tail draped over her shoulder and she brushed a hand over it coquettishly.

"You know, I do believe you look better in that hat than I do," Shepard shook her head, before taking another photo of her. Liara beamed, then slid up on the bed, wrapping her arms around the other woman's shoulders, hugging her close.

Shepard smiled slightly, resting her head on Liara's shoulder before reaching up and taking off the hat, tossing it aside. Pulling the asari with her she lay back, letting Liara drape over her.

Inclining her head a little as she looked down at the human woman, Liara noted the tension still lurking at the corners of her mouth, in that fine line between her eyebrows. "You still can't relax," she noted gently.

"I'm just frustrated, Tianlán," Shepard murmured. "Two goddamn months, and we've gone from heroes to a fuckin' clean-up crew. Mopping up geth…we _should_ be hunting down every scrap of information we can find on the Reapers, make sure they actually _are_ trapped in dark space. Instead we're popping walking trash-cans and chasing ghosts."

"I know," Liara said understandingly.

"Two fuckin' months. _Four days_ in this sector alone!"

"I know," Liara repeated, and lightly kissed the corner of Shepard's mouth. "You did not give up hunting Saren and Sovereign. I know you will not give up on this."

"Hmm," Shepard snorted, then smirked. "Here, plant one a little more center. Maybe that'll help."

Liara smiled slightly, then leaned down again and kissed her properly. Drawing back she asked, "Better?"

"I don't know…I think repeat testing is in order," Shepard hedged.

"Oh you _do_?" Liara murmured, and repeated the gesture, making this one last. As their hearts fell into perfect rhythm, she felt Shepard's fingers lightly stroking her lower back. Goosebumps lifted a moment, warmth rushing over her.

As the kiss broke again, Shepard looked at her softly for a second, then smiled and winked. Drawing the camera over she scooted a little, urging Liara to lay back beside her. Lifting the camera above them at arm's length, Shepard zoomed in on their faces.

"Smile," she murmured, and then snapped the shot.

As she lowered the camera again, Liara turned and nuzzled her ear, kissing it before she whispered softly, "I lo-"

_{Brace for evasive maneuvers!}_

Joker's voice blasted through the comm, a breath before the entire ship seemed to lift and then drop with a bone-crushing jar. The wail of alarms filled the air. Instantly Shepard was off the bed, slapping her hand into her console.

"_Report_!"

_{We are under attack! They came out of nowhere! We're hit bad! Pressley is-}_

He broke off as another metal-ripping slam tore through ship.

"Get dressed and in your hard-suit!" Shepard snapped at Liara as soon as she'd regained her balance. Without bothering to change, she charged bare-foot out of her quarters.

Smoke from a dozen small fires was filling the air, forms rushing in every direction. As Shepard reached her locker, Ashley ran up, already in her hard-suit. Without waiting for her to speak Shepard barked, "Get up to the CIC! See if-"

The ship rumbled again, the low hollow boom of an explosion sounding from somewhere below them. "_Get these people to the escape pods_!" Shepard amended, hauling on her own suit with a swiftness born of practice. Ashley vanished toward the CIC, Shepard running toward the gunnery controls, helmet in hand.

Slamming the emergency beacon launch with a fist, the console folded out from the wall just outside Armament. As the holo interface lit up, she pulled on her helmet, locking it down.

* * *

><p>Frantically dressing, Liara felt like she was moving in slow motion, her heart thundering with fear. Tugging her shirt down she grabbed the small camera and slipped it into her pocket. As she turned to leave the room, the ship lurched again, flinging her off her feet. Somehow she managed to catch herself, one arm on the bed, the other on the nightstand. As she pulled herself back up her fingers closed on paper. Nearly tearing it she pulled it free from where it was weighted by the clock, unconsciously jamming it in her pocket even as she fled to retrieve her hard-suit.<p>

Fires raged everywhere, smoke pooling above her as she ran toward Armament, knowing Shepard would be launching the distress beacon. She pulled her helmet on, locking it down even as she ran up behind the woman.

Shepard was struggling with the console, which was flashing an error message. Her helmet briefly turned toward Liara as the asari drew to a halt.

_{Distress beacon is ready but won't goddamn launch!}_ she told Liara over the helmet comm.

_{Will the Alliance even reach us in time?}_

Shepard rose, snatching an emergency extinguisher off the wall and tossing it to the asari, who caught it. She pointed at a fire in front of the conduit access leading to the console, and Liara obediently set about putting out the flames.

_{They damn well better!}_ Shepard barked back, slapping open another panel and reaching in, re-routing some power before she moved over to Liara. The flames now out, she tore open the access and began working.

_{Mayday mayday mayday!}_ Joker's voice echoed over the comm. _{This is _SSV Normandy, _we have taken heavy damage! We are under attack by an unknown dreadnaught…can anyone hear me!}_

_{Joker! Get to the damn escape pod!}_ Shepard shouted. If the pilot heard her, he didn't respond, only repeating his previous message. Shepard cursed, yanked the last connection into place, and straightened, grabbing Liara's arm.

_{Get to the escape pods!}_

_{I'm_ not _leaving you!}_ Liara retorted firmly, the same fire lighting in her eyes that had flared on Ilos, when Shepard had insisted on going to see Vigil alone. Grabbing the sides of Liara's helmet, Shepard peered through her own visor into the asari's.

_{Liara, I __**need**__ you to help these people! I_ _**need**_ _you to get them into the escape pods! I'll head up and get Joker.}_

_{But-}_

_{__**Go**__, Liara!} _Shepard barked, and then as she released her helmet, she added more softly, _{Please.}_

Shepard turned back to the console, the beacon launch now flickering green and yellow instead of red. Liara felt her mouth grow dry.

_Trust her. You _have_ to trust her._

_{Aye aye} _she murmured back, then reluctantly turned and ran.

* * *

><p>As Shepard reached the door of the CIC, she could hear Joker still screaming in her ear, shouting his maydays and begging the <em>Normandy<em> to hold together. Shepard knew better than that…every shudder through the ship was nothing more than the dying throes of a mortally wounded beast. She yelled repeatedly, ordering him to get to the helm's escape pod, but he either couldn't…or _wouldn't_…hear her.

As the doors started opening her HUD suddenly flashed a warning. The sudden rush of air from behind her jostled her, the magnet locks in her boots the only things that kept her from stumbling, quite literally, out into space.

The CIC was all but gone, only the floor and ragged lengths of wall keeping the _Normandy_'s body attached to its head. Debris floated idly about, caught along with the vessel's inertia and so seeming to just hang like insane party favors overhead.

Above she could see only space, eternal, depthless, black as death and as beautiful as diamonds sunk on velvet. The edge of a large planet, gold and rose, was slowly moving into view.

_The_ Normandy _is caught in her gravity well. It'll pull the wreckage right in._

Hands drifted down, fingers sweeping lightly over Shepard's faceplate, like weeds in a still pond. Gently brushing them aside, Shepard looked up into the half-burned but still recognizable face of Ensign Parks. Parks had been assigned to them just after the Citadel attack…she had just been twenty.

Shepard's dark brown eyes shifted a little, the face of the serenely drifting Ensign reflecting on her face-plate in a background of glowing stars, before the commander turned away.

The helm had been sealed off with a barrier. Striding toward it slowly, unable to move too fast lest her magnets lose lock on the ship's deck, she could see Joker still at the helm, shouting his frantic maydays as he attempted to turn the crippled _Normandy_ out of the planet's gravity.

Reaching the barrier, she carefully passed through…as if surfacing from that still pond in which Parks floated peacefully. Once clear she rushed forward.

_{Joker! Let's go!}_ she barked.

_{No, I have to turn her!} _Joker shot back, straining with the controls_. {She'll fall into Alchera!}_

_{The ship is _lost_, Joker! The two of us dying with her isn't going to stop it from happening!}_

His eyes widened suddenly. _{Commander, they're firing aga-!}_

The helm shuddered violently, and Shepard turned at a flare of light and an ominous rumble. For a moment, she could see the beam of some massive weapon slicing through what remained of the CIC, severing it with all the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

She had never seen anything like it before. Plasma torpedoes, pocket nukes, heavy bombardment rounds, those she had expected. This was something far beyond her experience, beyond the pale.

When the attack had come, she had naturally expected it was the geth…now, she began to wonder. Unless the geth had come up with some seriously radical weapon upgrades in the last two months, this was someone else _entirely_.

Whipping around she snatched hold of Joker's arm, ignoring his startled yelp of pain as she all but bodily lifted him out of the pilot's chair.

_{We have no more time!}_ she snapped as she hauled him toward the helm's escape pod. As the door hissed open she pushed him inside. He would probably suffer a few fractures but there was no time to be gentle.

Even as she shoved, she felt a shove herself as the helm erupted with a violent, flaming cough. Slamming into the edge of the pod door she rebounded, the force enough to tear her magnet locked boots away from the deck. Reaching out frantically she felt her fingertips brush over the frame of the pod hatch, saw Joker's alarmed face gape back at her, eyes wide.

He struggled up, trying to get to his feet, one hand reaching out as if he had any hope of catching hold of her.

_{Commander!}_

Another wall drifted past her and she grabbed hold of it tightly, risking a look back.

The CIC was gone, slowly tumbling away in a ruin. The barrier enclosing the helm was flickering, about to die. If it went, and that pod wasn't closed, it would explosively decompress and Joker would instantly be killed.

The pod could be launched both from within and from the panel on the wall…the very ragged wall to which Shepard now clung. The control was, in fact, only inches from her hand. If she hit it, the pod would shut and launch. Joker would be safe, but she would be sealing her own fate.

For Shepard, that had never been a hard decision.

She reached for the control just as the wall seemed to tear itself away from her hand, her grip ripping free. Slapping out frantically she barely managed to hit the command before she sailed away again, out of reach.

_**{Shepard!}**_

The pod slammed shut, and a breath later rocketed free of the _Normandy's_ ruined corpse. Almost the same instant, the barrier gave way, the entire helm splitting apart in a glut of fire as that strange beam lanced through it.

The fire was brief, flaring only a moment on the scant oxygen that had been trapped in the helm. Shepard slammed into something, found herself tumbling madly, then hit something else. The second strike halted her mad tumble and she gasped as she looked around herself.

Like a shattered egg, the remains of her once beautiful ship were falling away all around her, slowly drifting toward the planet looming ever larger. She could hear only her own frantic breathing, her HUD flashing red as it reported communication links were severed. Then another warning flashed up, just as Shepard realized her panting was not drawing any oxygen.

Either one of the strikes or the lancing shards of metal thrown by each explosion had managed to damage her hard-suit's oxygen unit, slicing through lines. Groping back, she could feel the faint blast of venting oxygen flowing past her gloves. Clamping down she tried to seal the leak but her HUD only continued to flash, now showing warnings of her own vital signs. There must be more than one leak.

Gasping frantically for air that was not there, Shepard came to a realization that she was going to die, that she had already taken her last breath, her lungs were just in denial of that fact. Black spots began to flare in front of her vision, her head swimming, each fruitless gasp producing only desperate burning in her chest. Slowly her hands slipped away from their failed attempts to clamp off the leaks. As she listened to the thundering of her heart, time seemed to slow. Her gasps faded away, and she blinked once…then twice, her brown eyes reflecting the distant stars, the beautiful red and gold of the slowly nearing planet.

For a moment, she fancied she could hear Liara's voice again, but it was only a memory of words once spoken.

_Find your peace, Shepard. We are all one. You are part of everything around you, part of the rock and the trees, part of life and the void. We are all connected. Find your peace, Shepard._

The faint sound of seagulls, the soothing shift of the ocean. Shepard's eyes fixed on the stars but she saw only clouds, and sunlight.

_Are you there?_

Blue lips barely moved, struggling to form a word, but with no air to give that word form.

_Yes_.

_Let go. It's all right. Embrace your peace, Shepard. Embrace eternity._

The madly flashing HUD suddenly shifted to steady red, the rapidly dropping vital signs falling flat. Shepard no longer saw the stars, or the planet beneath her. She didn't see the first shimmers of orange and amber as she entered the upper atmosphere, didn't feel the heat beginning to grow around her.

She saw and felt only peace.

* * *

><p>Liara ran down the docking corridor of the <em>SSV Seattle, <em>ignoring the forms rushing around her save to dodge them. Behind her, she could hear the heavy slap of Williams' boots as she trotted to catch up, but the Chief wisely did not try and halt her.

Eight pods had so far been retrieved by the _Seattle_…two more by the _SSV Nova Scotia_. Liara and Ashley had not been aboard the same one, but they had both been among the first retrieved. For the last two hours, they had been trying to get a full list of everyone that had been accounted for as each pod was tractored in. Ten pods recovered…and the _Normandy_ had boasted only eleven.

The remaining pod had been the small pilot launch off the helm, the only one that Shepard and Joker could have gotten too. They had just heard from the infirmary that this final pod had been located and was being moved into dock.

The dockside door parted before the two rushing women, displaying a scene of no less chaos. Darting past mechanics they quickly spotted the pod as it settled to the deck, and picked up speed.

Two medics were waiting, and as soon as the pod settled its door released and irised open. The medics ducked inside, then emerged almost immediately, supporting a pained, haggard looking Joker.

Nearly shoving past them, Liara tried to catch her breath, staring into the small…and _empty_…lifeboat.

"No," she breathed softly, her stomach dropping a moment. Whirling as Ashley reached her side and also looked within, Liara took two steps and grabbed hold of Joker's uniform shirt.

"Where is she, Joker?" she gasped. The pilot didn't reply, just blinked at her with damp, swollen eyes that admitted a truth the asari most adamantly didn't want to hear. He looked away as horror, denial, filled her gaze.

"_No_! No, it's not possible. She…_where is she Joker_? Where is Shepard?"

"It was my fault," he mumbled. "I should have listened…should have gotten out-"

"_Where is she?"_

"Liara, they _have_ to get him to the infirmary," Ashley intervened, throwing a restraining arm around the asari's shoulders and urging her back. Her own lashes damp, she was nevertheless holding it together. A soldier _had_ to hold it together until the mission was done…and right now, Liara was her mission. The asari was not trained, not military. This was a ragged wound she was not prepared to deal with.

"No! He has to _tell me_!" Liara demanded, her eyes swimming, her head pounding as Ash drew her back firmly. Her fingers slipped free from Joker's shirt and as the medics led him away Liara started to crumple. Ashley held her up, murmuring in her ear.

"We'll find out," she promised. "Ok? Keep it together, Li. There's still a chance. The Skipper wouldn't give up on us and we won't give up on _her_, all right? There could be a mistake in the report from the _Nova Scotia. _She could have been in one of _those_ pods…it happens all the time in S&R. Things are chaotic, people are hurt…mistakes are made _all the time_. Ok?"

Eyes swimming with tears, Liara tried to steady herself, nodding with a sniffle. "I can't…I can't lose her, Ash…"

"We'll just…we'll see what's what, figure it out," Williams promised. "She's strong and she's smart and she doesn't quit. If there was a way you know she'd have found it. We just have to see what's what."

Liara nodded again, and Ashley hugged her tightly.

_Please, God, if you are out there,_ she prayed silently. _Please let_ _Shepard be ok. I've lost too many friends already._

* * *

><p>Hackett looked both tired and grim as he stepped in the door of the <em>Seattle<em>'_s_ mess. Being as the _Seattle_ was a cruiser with a very sizable crew, the mess was no dainty affair. His eyes searched over the tables before he spotted what he was looking for.

Chief Williams saw him at the same moment he saw her. Rising from the table, she put a hand on the asari's arm lightly before leaving her in the company of Chakwas and Garrus. As she drew near to Hackett she straightened and saluted.

He lifted his arm, returning the gesture, then nodded. "At ease, Chief."

"Admiral sir, I was not expecting to see you," Williams stated.

"I arrived about an hour ago to see to the situation," he replied. "I have already debriefed Moreau in the infirmary."

"Is…Jeff ok?" she asked.

"According to the medics he'll be just fine…a few minor fractures and bruises, nothing he can't handle," Hackett replied. "I already have a report from the _Seattle's_ captain regarding the intel gathered so far on the attack. I was hoping Moreau would have more information about the ship that hit the _Normandy_."

"Sir, I thought it was the geth."

"Apparently not," Hackett answered. "Any scans and readings went down with the _Normandy_ but according to your pilot, the hostile was a dreadnought of incredible size, with a weapons system the Alliance has only ever encountered once before."

Before she could ask he held up a hand. "It did _not_ match Sovereign, he was very sure of that. It was _not_ a Reaper, however the weapons were very similar, almost identical to what that machine used to decimate the Citadel fleet. A type of magnetohydrodynamic attack…basically a stream of molten metal accelerated to near the speed of light. Incredibly destructive. "

She nodded, then lifted her chin slightly, taking a deep breath. "Sir…Commander Shepard, sir. Did Jeff…have we located her yet? Do we know what happened?"

Hackett sounded weary as he responded, "Chief, Commander Shepard was killed in the line of duty."

Ashley's jaw tightened and she looked down a moment, before she nodded and straightened, meeting his eyes. "Can you tell me how it happened, sir?"

"According to Joker she managed to get him into the lifeboat before an explosion compromised her magnetic locks. She managed to manually launch the pod before the atmospheric barrier failed and the helm explosively decompressed. When I heard his report I checked the readings from the helm pod's short-distance scans. It reads Commander Shepard's suit vitals for roughly six minutes, showing a dramatic loss of oxygen pressure, before her vitals hit the line. Her suit was compromised, Chief…probably in the same blast that threw her into space to begin with."

He straightened a little, clasping his hands behind his back. "The wreckage was pulled into the planet's gravity. I have the captain scanning the attack site but I do not hold out any hope that we will recover her. I am…deeply sorry, Chief. The Alliance…we've _all _lost a damn fine marine, a good soldier, and a good friend. Shepard was a hero, and she will be honored as such."

"I understand sir," Ashley murmured softly. "Thank you, sir."

"The recovered _Normandy_ crew will be transferred over to the _Nova Scotia_ in the next three hours, and taken back to Alliance space for full treatment and debriefing."

"Understood, sir," she replied, and then saluted again. He mirrored it, nodded slightly as she turned and walked back through the mess toward the table that held her crew-mates. Hackett watched silently as the other three looked up at her. She drew to a halt, and he could see she was speaking though he could not hear the words.

After a moment Chakwas covered her mouth, Vakarian lowering his head and closing his eyes. T'Soni shook her head, half rising as she seemed to say something angrily…and then just crumpled into a sob. Williams caught her, helping her to sit again as the asari broke down.

Clearing his throat, Hackett lowered his gaze, then closed his eyes for a moment of respectful silence, before he turned and walked out.

* * *

><p>The sky to the north was still a brilliant blue, deepening slowly toward sapphire and navy, and finally into vibrant pink and gold at the south. It seemed sunsets on Torfan lingered forever. Liara certainly felt she had been standing here for days, even weeks of time.<p>

Her blue eyes reflected the softly dancing flame, watching its lazy motion, its slow shiftings. It sprouted from the block of polished white marble, covered from the elements by a pagoda of similar white marble. Over the doorway gold letters had been sunk into the stone. Three dignified, unobtrusive ranks of letters. They read:

_**In Memoriam**_

_**Commander Delilah S. Shepard**_

_**Integrity, Loyalty, Vigilance**_

In front of the block, below the eternity flame, were bundles and bundles of flowers, some small stuffed items or trinkets. They had been left by the ranks of grievers and well-wishers that had filed all day into and out of this place. The crowds had dissipated, however, ushered off by security, by marines, as the day waxed late. They had left Liara alone. Captain Anderson had asked them too.

_No. He'll be Councilor Anderson in only two days, _she thought idly_. The Council actually listened to you this time, Shepard. _

A slow mix of grief and anger trembled her hands at that thought. Not that Anderson was being elected to the Council, marking yet another landmark for humanity…but that the Council hadn't listened to Shepard _before_, that they had tuned out her every warning, treated her as if she were crazy, unreliable.

_If they had just _listened_, the Citadel would never have been attacked. The _Normandy_ would never have been attacked. If they had just listened, so many people would still live. _You_ would have lived. You wouldn't have left me here…_

The dancing flame blurred, first doubling and then trebling, its golden light scattering in the embrace of tears. Liara closed her eyes, feeling them spill down her cheeks…just more shed in the wake of countless others.

"Well, she wouldn't have liked this at _all_."

The voice, unexpected, startled her. Swiping at her face, Liara turned around, blinking dumbly.

The human woman standing in the door of the memorial was older, short hair going liberally to gray. She had a careworn face, lined deeply in several places, and a no-nonsense stance that was only enforced by a good deal of plump.

"I…I'm sorry?" Liara asked, confused. The park should have been closed. Anderson and his marines were guarding it. No one should have gotten in without their permission.

"_This_," the woman repeated, gesturing at the room in general. Her brows were knit, eyes reddened but dry. Stepping forward, she shifted her gesture to the mass of flowers, cards, and stuffed animals. "_All_ of this. There's no booze, for one. No pool tables. Jazz should be playing. Smoke filling the air, people picking fist-fights…"

Turning she suddenly pointed at Liara as if the asari had spoken. "A _bar_!" she announced with a smile. "_That's_ what she would have liked. Not _this_ fluff. If the Alliance had named a _bar_ after her, _that_ would have been better."

Liara looked baffled, blinking once. Then her expression cleared a little and she inclined her head. "Forgive me," she said softly. "I should have recognized you the moment you entered. You are-"

"Nancy Salgado," the woman said, stepping over and taking Liara's hands as if they were decades-old friends, just reunited. "And you, my dear…you are _Tianlán_."

Hearing Shepard's nickname for her cut her lightly across the soul, and she could only manage a weak nod. Nancy gave her hands a soft squeeze. "Come on," she said gently. "Let me buy you a drink. Del wouldn't hang out in this place anyway…let's see if we can't find her."

* * *

><p>The bars in Torfan's Robertson colony were nowhere near as dingy or secluded as those Shepard had favored in New York, but that was all right. Nan found a small blues club and within an hour the pair of them were nursing their third round of drinks, half-lost in clouds of cigarette smoke as they listened to the music.<p>

Nancy had been right. Liara could almost _feel _Shepard here, shifting along with the smoke, moving through each note of music. The sensation both comforted and pained her.

"I…I should probably give this to you," she murmured, drawing a piece of paper from her pocket. "I'm…not even sure why I grabbed it in the chaos but…"

She trailed off with a vague shake of her head. Unfolding the paper delicately, as if it would crumble to ash at the slightest breath, she laid it flat and turned it toward the human woman. Nancy's brows knit and she inclined her head as she picked it up.

"Oh…I haven't seen this in…in so long," she murmured. On the paper a pair of figures rendered in bright, cheerful crayon clasped hands happily. Spelled out almost painstakingly in sunshine yellow were the words _'To Del. Bestust Buds.'_

As she touched the figures, she looked up at Liara. "Paul drew this for her. My son…he thought she was the most wonderful thing since sliced bread."

"She told me," Liara replied softly. "She loved Paul. She…she blamed herself so much for what happened to him."

"I know," Nan nodded, tears glossing her eyes. "She was always so hard on herself. She was so determined to make everything better. She just could not understand that sometimes, you just couldn't _control_ what happened."

Covering her lips a moment she then put her hand over the figures on the paper. "My precious babies, God rest you both," she whispered, and then slid the drawing back over to Liara.

"I think you should keep this," she said.

"I…no, this belongs to you-"

"Psh. I'm an old, scatter-brained woman, darling. It'd end up lost in some dusty old trunk somewhere. Please, I _want_ you to keep it. They both deserve to be remembered for a very long time. Better your centuries than my mere decades."

Liara gingerly folded the drawing again, tucking it away. Like hundreds of wayward, troubled human children off the streets of New York, Liara discovered that Nancy was very easy to talk to. She was patient, loving…never once condescending or patronizing or aloof. As the night went on, and as the alcohol flowed more copiously, Liara found herself weeping miserably as she told the human woman things she never would have dreamed of sharing with any other near-total stranger…things she wouldn't have shared even with Ash, or Kaidan.

"I just feel so…so lost, torn…like part of me has been ripped away," she sniffled. "And yet I am…I am so _angry_…"

"Angry because she left you," Nancy murmured her understanding. "Angry because she didn't listen to you."

"Yes! _Why_ did she have to stay? She always had to look out for her crew…why couldn't she have just looked out for _herself_ for once? She should have left Joker _there_ if he was so dead-set on staying! I…I _hate him so much_! It's _his _fault she stayed behind!"

Even as she said it, she knew she did not mean it…and she knew that Nancy knew she did not mean it. She didn't really hate Joker, didn't really wish he had died with the _Normandy_…she was just mad at him, furious that he'd done what he did, and that Shepard had paid the price for it.

Anger…_real_ anger, like this...the kind that burned and seemed to swell in your mind in a flaming heat…this was not an emotion that Liara was used to. It made her sick to feel it.

"If Del had been capable of just looking out for herself like that, she wouldn't be the Del that we both loved," Nancy said calmly. Her eyes were damp but her grip on Liara's hand was steady, comforting.

"I…I-I know. I just…I do not know what I am going to do. I just want her back. I just want to stop hurting."

Moving her chair over a little, Nancy enveloped Liara in a warm, soft, jasmine-scented hug. Comforting the asari, the woman closed her eyes, ignoring the traces of her own tears that slowly worked through the lines on her cheeks. "I know you do, sweetheart. I do too. But this pain isn't what she'd want either. Oh, you are a kind darling aren't you? I can see why she loved you so much."

Sitting back a little with a faint sniff, Liara wrinkled her brow as she regarded the woman. "I…she never said," she replied almost timidly. "Did she-"

"Tell me? Oh no. But I knew that girl better than she knew herself. I saw the vids…that salute after your Mama passed, during the awards ceremony after the Citadel…you may not have noticed but in _that_ one she kept lookin' your way, seeking you out in the audience. She hated ceremony like that…you were her anchor to get her through. And I heard the way she talked about you last time she called. Didn't say much but I could hear it in her voice. That girl _loved_ you. More than she probably loved anything in this whole sorry universe…and that includes me and Paul."

"Oh, _n-no_, I don't think-"

"She _did_," Nancy stated matter-of-factly, with an understanding smile. "And that's all right. That's the way it should be. I'm grateful to you, sweetheart. I'm so thankful for that. Del had so much pain growing up. The lovely things of life were denied to her for so long…I didn't think she'd ever open up that much to anyone, ever _really_ connect with another soul. I am so grateful to you that she didn't leave us, never knowing what that was like."

* * *

><p>It was nearing dawn when the two women finally stepped out of the bar, hands clasped. As a taxi slowed to stop Nancy paused.<p>

"You sure you don't want to ride back with me? I don't mind sharing the cab."

"No, thank you," Liara murmured. "I have my own car waiting to take me to a shuttle to the moon station. Captain Anderson has been…beyond kind in all of this. Are you staying on Torfan long?"

"Oh, no. I have to be getting back to the colony. Lord knows they'd be lost without me. You? Are you heading home to Thessia?"

"No, not…not quite yet. I have some business I have to attend to first, on Omega. I…need to keep myself busy. But…soon, I suppose."

Nancy nodded, then hugged her tightly. "I'm so glad I got to meet you, sweetie," she whispered. "I just wish it was under happier circumstances."

As she released the asari she smiled affectionately. "Call me any time. And if you are ever in the Terminus and want a good old-fashioned home-cooked colony meal, you look me up. You are welcome any time."

"Thank you, Nan. I will do that."

She watched silently, wearily, as the human woman climbed into the cab, the vehicle lifting and then whisking her away. Reaching into her pocket she unfolded the crayon drawing again, touching her fingers lightly to the bigger figure, before a voice cleared behind her.

"Ma'am?" the marine private murmured politely. "The car is waiting."

_I miss you, Del. Please…if you are out there anywhere…if you can hear me somehow, please…help this pain to stop. Help me to stop missing you…_

"Ma'am? The shuttle to the moon is leaving in just twenty minutes. You don't want to miss it."

"No, I do not," she replied, folding the picture up again and sliding it back into her pocket. "Thank you."

* * *

><p><strong>THREE WEEKS LATER<strong>

* * *

><p>The capsule glided smoothly over the polished deck, the anti-grav unit at its base barely humming as it moved, guided by three men in black and white fatigues. The asari who followed it looked ragged, tired…her sleeve torn and her eyes sunk into dark blue hollows.<p>

As they neared the interior station door, it whisked open to reveal a dark-haired, stunningly beautiful woman. "Good," she noted in an unmistakably Australian accent, her blue eyes gleaming as she saw the capsule. "Take it into the main laboratory."

"Wait," the asari interjected. "Just for a moment."

The woman arched a brow, looking at her. "Dr. T'Soni, it's best if we evaluate the condition of the remains as quickly as possible."

"I-I know, I just…I just want to see her. Just once. Please."

"She's hardly going to be pretty-"

"You know what I've done, how hard I fought, to find her and get her here!" Liara retorted hotly. "You know what was sacrificed. Feron-…_please_. Lawson, I am giving her to you against my better judgment. I think that the least you can do is let me _see her_."

Lawson pursed her lips a moment, glancing at the capsule thoughtfully a second, before commiserating. "Very well. But not out here. We don't dare open the capsule until we're in the clean room."

She directed the men forward, following behind with T'Soni.

They entered the main laboratory's clean room, everything so stark white and gleaming it looked unreal. Nodding to the escorts, the woman directed them to unfasten the environmental controls and unlock the capsule.

"You'll only have about thirty seconds before we have to move her into the lab proper," she warned the asari. "Out of the controlled environment cellular decomposition will resume, and only cause more damage to the body."

"I understand," Liara replied solemnly. Reaching out herself, Lawson input the final command into the capsule controls, and the seam in the middle of the lid began to widen. A hiss of gasses escaped, carrying a breath of artificial winter in their wake. Fogging in the slightly warmer temperature of the clean room, the gasses pooled and wafted about their feet.

As the lid fully opened, the mist clearing, Liara steeled herself and stepped forward, looking within.

The form within was badly burned, garbed in melted chunks of plastic and metal that was only in certain places recognizable as a marine's hard-suit. Liara could see the dirty, scuffed and scorched N7 insignia on the breastplate.

What flesh could be seen was blackened, cracked, showing deeper glimmers of brown and crimson and the occasional nicotine-yellow of smoke-coated bone.

The figure didn't even lay in one piece. Its arms were severed and neatly placed on either side of it, ragged edges marking where they had been ripped free and cooked with heat. The right leg still was attached but the left was missing from mid-thigh up, part of a cracked, gray femur visible through the seared meat.

Tears welled in Liara's eyes, but her face remained stoic as she took in the sight, her eyes travelling to the helmet. The faceplate was cracked, half-shattered. What remained of it was opaque with soot and smoke damage. Beneath it lay only shadow, the vague hint of shape. Forcing herself to step closer, she covered her mouth and then lowered her hand, determined to see.

From the new angle, enough light shed through the jagged faceplate and she saw the ominous grin of teeth. Lips, cheek, and most of the nose was sheared away and incinerated. It was not that macabre smile, however, that finally undid her.

Somehow, by some miracle, the helmet had protected a small part of the face from burning. Still the pale of dead flesh, a section remained almost perfect. From cheekbone to eyebrow and encompassing part of the nose, a swath was completely intact. A single, half-lidded brown eye, foggy and dull with death, stared up, past the asari and into the unknown.

Covering her mouth again, she barely restrained a sob as she turned away from the sight. Lawson nodded and silently waved the men into the main laboratory. She did not follow, but made no move to touch or comfort Liara. After a moment, the young doctor recovered herself, sniffing faintly as she straightened. "You can bring her back?" she whispered.

"We will do everything we can," Lawson replied. "But I can promise nothing. The remains are…well, you saw for yourself. Even if we are able to proceed it will be slow…likely years. Even then, we may not succeed. This is hardly familiar territory."

Liara nodded. When she turned her head her blue eyes were storm-colored steel.

"Just…you just bring her back to me. Just bring her _back_!"


	2. Chapter 2

Though it was just after 0200 station time, the lights in the main lab were full-bright, the air lively with various sounds as machines collated, beeped, and hummed diligently.

The room's only permanent occupant lay silently, a slumbering spider half-lost in a tangle of tubing, wires, and the grid-like laser monitoring system that measured the depth of every breath, the faintest twitch of every muscle.

"Your hair is growing in well," Wilson told the unconscious form, brushing his fingers lightly over black tresses. They had the silk-fine gloss of baby hair and he smirked with irony. "Honestly, I do good work. It's kind of a shame."

The touch of his hand had, of course, disrupted the laser monitor and had been noted in the computer's memory. Shaking his head he turned toward the console, swiftly isolating and then eliminating the record, careful to cover his tracks so that nothing could pinpoint him being in the lab at this hour.

"It's nothing personal, you understand," he said casually as he worked. "In fact, it's more than a bit frustrating, flushing nearly two years worth of work down the toilet. It shouldn't come as any surprise to you that you have enemies. Rather _serious_ enemies, since the request was made that you not just be euthanized, but that you _suffer_. Honestly, blame the Illusive Man. If he paid me decent I wouldn't have to do this but…you understand. I got bills, sweetheart, detractors…and I'm getting a huge chunk of change for this."

Finishing clearing the records out and inputting two innocuous looking commands, he glanced over at the chemically slumbering form again, then scrubbed a hand over his bald pate. This was the moment of truth. No going back from here. Sixty seconds.

He had barely activated the command when suddenly the door opened. Startled, the man blinked wide-eyed at the dark-haired woman that strolled in.

"Miranda? What are you doing here?"

"I work here, Wilson," she replied dryly.

"Well, yeah, but…it's two in the morning. I thought you were long asleep."

"Not that it's any of your business, but I had some reports I was finishing in my office and though I'd check on those samples again before I turned in. What are _you_ doing here?"

_Think! Think fast! There's only about fifteen more seconds before the shit will hit the fan. If Miranda even suspects you're responsible…_

"I was getting some strange spikes in her brain wave activity," he lied smoothly, surprising even himself. "I got her vitals hooked up to the console in my quarters. I don't think it's anything to be worried about, just extremely minor fluctuations. Thought I might as well come check on her in person. She…"

Right on time, the soft and steady drone of the heart monitor began to speed, and the form on the cot began to move, to shift slightly. Disrupted, the laser grid began reporting the motion and as it became more distinct, began to sound its own alarm.

"What the hell?" the woman strode over to the bio-bed, eyes widening.

"It's those spikes again," Wilson reported, fixing his eyes to his read-outs. "She's reacting to outside stimuli, showing an awareness of her surroundings…damn, Miranda, _she's waking up_!"

Had she been anyone other than who she was, Miranda might have stared in horror as the form on the bed shifted, eyes cracking open. Respiratory and heart rate spiked rapidly…and not just in confusion and fear. There was a _reason_ she was still unconscious. Consciousness brought with it unbelievable pain…pain a human body was not meant to endure. That alone would push her vitals beyond the red-line and kill her…and they didn't have nearly enough resources to cure her again.

"Give her the sedative," Miranda ordered sharply, looking over her shoulder at Wilson. "We have to get her out again before-"

A weak hand grasped her wrist. Looking back at the patient, Miranda almost reflexively removed that hand and lowered it again, giving it a gentle squeeze. Dark brown eyes, foggy with semi-consciousness and yet vibrantly alive with agony, seemed to fixate on her face.

"Damn it, Wilson!"

"It's not working! Her vitals are too high, Miranda, she's about to hit the line!"

"_Double the dose_! Give it to her _again_!"

Even as she barked the order she strode over, shoving Wilson out of the way and inputting the medication command herself. Almost immediately, the frantic wailing of the machines began to die down, the bright flares of color over the 3D holo of the brain rotating nearby began to muddy and dull back down into unawareness.

Miranda returned to the patient's side, cupping her face and watching as the wildly dilating pupils began to relax and widen, the hot misery fading and retreating like a fish diving into the depths of the sea. She let out a faint breath of relief.

"She's stabilizing," she murmured.

"That was too close. We almost lost her," Wilson answered shakily. "I don't even want to imagine the amount of pain-"

"She's a tough bitch, I'll give her that," Miranda commented as unconsciousness fully settled again. "She must have felt she'd been skinned alive and dipped in acid, but she didn't utter a peep."

"Isn't that the whole point of bringing her back? Because she's one tough bitch?" Wilson snorted.

Turning on the man in irritation Miranda snapped hotly, "Run your numbers again. She shouldn't have woken up on her own, not like that. We're going over every read-out, every minor chemical fluctuation for the last forty-eight hours if we have to. I want to know what caused her to surface and make sure it _doesn't_ happen again."

"Yes, ma'am," Wilson replied, turning back to the computer with a scowl. Thank fortune he'd covered his tracks so well…even Miranda wouldn't be able to detect his tampering. Now, thanks to her, he was going to have to find _another_ way to get rid of Shepard. That is, if he _ever_ hoped to see that stack of credits. Given what had just happened, the pile of meat was going to be under Miranda's constant and paranoid watch…which would only make things _much_ harder.

* * *

><p>Her blue eyes fluttered open at the wail and for a long moment she lay there in near perfect darkness, staring upward at her ceiling, trying to hold to the shreds of the dream she had been having. She remembered vivid colors, a dancing feeling, floating almost…no, it was gone.<p>

Trying to sort out what had woken her, she had nearly closed her eyes again when a faint sob sounded out.

In an instant she'd cast her blankets aside, her bare feet slapping over the cool tile as she ran out of her room and for the study.

"Mother!"

A chaos of bottles, spilled puddles that smelled sharply of alcohol, and a glimmering mirror covered in red and green and blue powder were littered over the low table. The chair was on its side, as was Osco…curled on the floor with her hands tangled in her short, gray-blonde hair as she sobbed.

Rushing to her side, Eír pulled the dangling hypodermic out of the woman's pale forearm, and unsnapped the tourniquet. A perfect ruby of blood grew and then spilled down pasty skin as the asari girl shifted the human woman into a sit, cradling her.

"Shh…shh, Mother," she murmured softly. "C'mon, up to your feet. We must get you into the lab."

"I got her," Thug's deep voice rumbled, a moment before the krogan stepped across the floor and bent, lifting the human without trouble. Eír trotted along in his wake as he carried Osco through the hall and into the small lab, laying her down on the bio-bed.

The human woman was unhealthy and pale. Never well-padded in her life, she had turned almost skeletal, her eyes sunk in deep brown hollows only made deeper by the faint red rash that spread on her cheeks and forehead. Throughout her body, the outlines of bones could be seen, roped together by thick cords of tough sinew.

Brushing her dry, straw-like hair back from her face, Eír peered worriedly into the reddened gaze of the only mother she had ever known. "You will be ok," she tried to reassure.

Osco sniffled, then smiled thinly. "Course I will, baby-girl," she murmured. "She just…she won't go away. She won't leave me alone."

"Shepard," Eír stated with a surprising venom. "You see her now?"

Osco's eyes shifted to the form against the far wall, a form only she could see. A rictus grin in a sallow face that seemed to swirl with greens, yellows, and rotten purples, beamed cheerfully back at her.

"Yes," Gellian murmured. "Always…"

"She is dead, Mother," Eír reassured. "You told me so yourself. She died two years ago."

"They're bringing her _back_, Eír," Osco replied fervently, grasping the asari's hand.

Though Eír was only two years old, thanks to Gellian's genetic manipulations she appeared as any young asari maid of at least ninety, the equivalent of a sixteen or seventeen year old human girl.

_She turned out so beautiful, 'Zia. More beautiful than even I was expecting. You would be so proud of her, a daughter worthy of_ you, _worthy to be called asari._

"We cannot let them do that," Eír replied vehemently. "But you cannot keep making yourself so sick, Mother. You need to be strong…for me and Thug. We need you."

"You don't need anyone, baby-girl. You already are so strong…there is none stronger in all of the galaxy. You _are_ strength."

Eír shook her head a little, tears in her eyes. "No…no, I am not so strong, not yet. Please. You must get well. You must stop making yourself so sick. If…if you die, then Shepard has won, don't you see? Then she has beaten you. We…we can do something. If they are bringing her back then we will kill her again. We can do _something_. Think, Mother. What can we do?"

Gellian's half-glazed eyes moved from Eír's face to that of the silently watching Thug. Her boy…a strong, mountainous, perfect example of the krogan. He was always so silent and brooding, a great rumbling storm-cloud waiting only for a word from his mother or his sister to lash out with the destructive force of a hurricane.

As her gaze returned to her daughter, ignoring the still grinning figure in the far corner, Gellian nodded slowly.

"Tuchanka," she whispered. "It is time for training…for both of you. We will go to Tuchanka, and if they _do_ manage to bring the bitch back…we'll be ready for her."

* * *

><p>The club was close and smoky, smelling richly of fried chicken, jalapenos, booze and the best cigars. Each press of her fingers on the guitar strings, each strumming cord that rang out from the old instrument, was perfect.<p>

One boot tapped out a rhythm on the rickety wood stage as she strummed. Brown eyes shifted upward toward the bar as she wondered if that chicken was going to be done soon. She could almost taste it, crunchy with spices and hot with peppers.

A motion at the back of the bar, a strangely hyper-real shimmer of blue, drew her attention. Tilting her head under her swagman hat, she leaned a little, trying to catch sight of the figure in the distance as it moved through the rapt crowd.

She saw the blue again as a face turned toward her, and she jolted. "Liara?"

The asari glanced at her and then continued on her way toward the far door. The music came to a halt as she set her guitar aside, rising off her stool. "Liara!"

The bar suddenly seemed a hundred times larger, a thousand times more crowded. Fighting past drunks and thugs who pushed deliberately into her path, she was growing more and more frantic…more and more angry.

"Liara, _wait_!"

The asari was nearly to the door. Growling, she planted a fist in a face or two, tearing her jacket free of clinging and clawing hands, shoving forward.

"Tianlán! Where are you going? Stop! Please, _stop_!"

The asari didn't look at her again, but she could hear her voice now, calling back to her.

"Shepard! Shepard, can you hear me?"

"Here! I'm here, Tianlán! I'm right behind you!"

She shoved forward again, knocking a waitress with a tray full of beers onto her ass. Glass shattered, amber foamed over her boots. The waitress angrily grabbed at her ankle as she started past, and in return, she kicked the woman in the face.

"Shepard!" the plaintive call seemed louder though the figure near the door seemed so distant. As she watched, Liara took hold of the handle.

"_I'm coming!"_

A great hulking form appeared in her path, a man the size of a wall with a low-slung forehead and breath that reeked of sour beer. Though he stood at least two feet taller than she did, though he had shoulders to measure doorways, she didn't hesitate.

"Get out of my _way_!" she barked, fist lashing out and spreading a fantastic roundhouse over his lips and teeth.

Flesh split, blood flew, and the man collapsed into dust, the room suddenly empty as the other patrons seemed to collapse with him.

Instantly unencumbered, she ran forward as fast as she was able. Liara glanced back at her a final time before slipping through the door. The same breath in which it latched shut, Shepard all but tore it back open again.

For a brief moment, she saw a beautiful beach with smooth white sand. A turquoise ocean stretched to the horizon, lit with a shimmering sun ten times as bright as any she had ever seen. She could smell the salty air, hear the calling of birds. Down near the water's edge, she could see a boy…she could see _Paul_, standing and waving at her joyfully.

"_Shepard!"_

Then it was gone. Something wailed in her ear, the familiar humming throb of an alarm klaxon. Light smeared and blurred as she cracked open her eyes, gasping faintly as sharp pain seemed to stab through her from every angle.

Disorientation, confusion, assaulted her as she tried to focus her eyes, tried to move.

"Commander Shepard! Move your sorry ass _now_!"

The voice, firm and demanding, immediately brought her to mind of her drill master in boot. Reflex took over and she ungracefully sat up, stumbling onto her feet before she even had time to think.

_Wait…what's going on? I'm not in boot any more. Is this an infirmary? Where am I?_

Scrubbing at her eyes, trying to clear them, she was suddenly aware of how incredibly weak she felt. She did not recognize any of her surroundings, though it was more and more clear it was an infirmary of some kind.

Quickly, she took stock. Her entire body hurt, though the initial white stabs of pain had dulled into an all-over ache at every motion of her muscles. Though she had been standing only moments, she felt shaky, exhausted. She plucked at the gray, non-descript pair of scrubs she was dressed in. She was barefoot and from the feel, she was wearing nothing underneath them. A light, unfamiliar sensation drifted over her shoulders and she lifted a hand. Her hair was long, hanging in curtains around her face, falling nearly to her middle-back. Her hair hadn't been nearly that long before…had it?

She pushed it aside. Something strange had happened. She had been injured somehow, probably badly. She had no memory of it but there was no other explanation. For some reason she had been left alone, and judging by the wailing klaxons and the faint distant rumbles that could only be explosions, she didn't have time to sit and try and figure it out. She had to move.

Now.

Looking around she quickly took stock of her surroundings. Not sure who was attacking, her first priority was some kind of weapon. Grabbing drawers, compartmentalizing the burning, aching weakness in her muscles, she began to rifle through them. They offered nothing more deadly than a laser scalpel, which she tossed angrily aside.

Cabinets…nothing useful. Then her eyes landed on the stand-light not too far away. Moving over she snatched hold of it, unscrewing its base from the floor. Gripping the top light fixture, she unscrewed that as well, glad it was an enclosed LED light so she didn't have to fuss with wires or risk being shocked. Free of its base and of its fixture, she had only the stand in her hand now…a four foot long steel pipe. It would have to do.

As she moved to the door she listed her priorities. Find a communication point. Find a better weapon. Gather as much intel on the situation as she could. Establish the enemy, establish the mission. Survive at _all costs_.

The infirmary door was not secure, and opened easily at her touch. A small room lay beyond it and as she glanced around, she noticed the decom equipment embedded in the walls. On the opposite side lay another door.

So the lab she'd been in was static-free, for whatever reason. The only time she'd heard of that being done was for severe burn victims, or to quarantine someone with an exotic or unidentified contagion.

Edging toward the second door she crouched to one side as it slid open. When no immediate attack came, she carefully peeked around.

A corridor, hazy with smoke that was lit by the whirling red lights of the alarm. No one was in evidence. Rising, keeping to one wall with her make-shift steel baton in one hand, she moved quickly down the corridor.

As she reached the far door, her name was suddenly spoken from somewhere near the ceiling.

"Shepard! I've re-e-e-e-established communications but I don't know for how long. B-b-b-b-beeeeee careful, there are security mechs closing in on your position. T-t-t-two are three m-m-meeeeters to your r-r-r-"

The electronic stuttering of the failing comm distorted the woman's words before it cut out again altogether.

Security mechs, she'd said. Shepard searched her hazy memory frantically. What did she know about security mechs?

_The Alliance was researching practical applications for heavy mechs in combat scenarios. Some ships had them as standard issue…the _Hirohito_, and the…the _Melbourne_. Smaller mechs were used as security and some combat detail._

So, the security mechs would be on her side then. Alliance military issue.

_No…no, she said 'be careful'. Why would_…whoever _she is…warn you about allies?_

She tensed as the door suddenly opened. Through the haze she could see a pair of smaller mechs, and remembered they had always kind of creeped her out. Humanoid, they didn't actually _look _human…very much on purpose. When they were first being developed it was thought that creating them with anything even resembling an organic appearance would be too much for genuine organics to handle. With recognition of the mechs came memory…including memory on how to take them out.

They both held pistols and being dumbass chunks of metal, did not check their corners. The moment they were past Shepard whirled and planted her bare foot in the lower back joint of the nearest, throwing it to the ground. Stepping up onto its fallen form and crouching she swung the pipe like a bat, taking the other one across the back of the knees. As it stumbled she rose and stabbed the pipe through the head of the first, killing it in a flash of sparks and then sweeping up its pistol in a single motion that ended with a bullet planted in the face-lights of the second. In the space of a pair of heartbeats, both mechs were down and out, and Shepard was more satisfactorily armed.

Seeing no consoles, and not skilled enough to hack a mech (even if she could, it probably wouldn't have yielded much information to begin with), Shepard carefully moved on. The soft slap of her bare feet was inaudible above the continuous alarm wailing.

Where were all the people? There had to be people around _somewhere_. The woman who'd tried talking to her over the comm, for one…where was _she_?

Her long hair was irritating her, falling in her way. Keeping the pistol in one hand she grabbed her hair in a sloppy handful, twisting it and tying it in a loose knot to keep it out of her face. Spotting a door marked with a universal sign she slapped through it and into a small restroom.

Small, indeed. Two stalls, a sink, and a mirror were the only décor. One of the stall doors hung open on one hinge, the other having been torn free by apparently the same gunfire that had punched dozens of holes through the rest of the structure. She could see a thick lake of crimson on the tiles, and risked a peek within.

Whether it had been a man or a woman, the slumped body within was so chewed up with bullets it was recognizable as neither. Slumped on the toilet it was half-draped over the bog dispenser, blood still slowly dripping from dangling fingertips into the pool beneath it. As her bare-feet gingerly padded into the pool, she noted it was still slightly warm. This poor bastard couldn't have been dead longer than twenty minutes.

Gingerly, with a grimace, she eased her hand under its shattered jaw and lifted the remains of its head slightly. One eye, dangling by the optic nerve, broke free and plopped down at her feet at the motion.

A blood-spattered insignia was stitched on the shredded tunic just below the left shoulder. Her brows knit. It was not the Alliance insignia but it was somehow familiar. She knew she'd seen it before, but her all but absent memory refused to place it. Gently she let the chin drop down again, and backed out of the stall.

Turning to leave the bathroom and get some answers, she caught sight of herself in the small mirror…and halted.

Stepping slowly closer, the pistol clattered a little against the edge of the sink as she braced herself on it, her whole body trembling with more than just muscle exhaustion as she stared at her own reflection.

Normally warm chestnut skin was washed out, pale. Her face was gaunt, lean…her brown eyes slightly sunk into almost bruised hollows. Loose tendrils of her tied black hair hung around her cheeks and shook slightly as she did. She looked…half-_starved_. Clearly she had been sick or bed-ridden for a very long time, but that was not what made her stare.

Tiny lines, like wrinkles or cracks in her flesh, glimmered ever so faintly red. They mapped across her cheeks, chin, and forehead like some strange form of varicose vein. The fingers of her free hand quested upward, lightly touching them. There was faint pain, like pressing on a fresh bruise. She probed them lightly, then her fingers trailed down to her jaw, trembling more as they hovered.

"No," she whispered, turning her head and prodding more firmly over her skin, as if she could feel what she could not see.

A burn. She should have a burn, right here…a half-healed scar. Acid…yes, that was it. It was from acid…the fight with Saren, the Citadel but…but there was no trace of the scar! The flesh was completely whole, unmarked save those strange cracks.

Her scar was _gone_!

The pistol clattered into the sink as she grabbed her scrubs, pulling the neckline down and feeling her collar bone.

No. There should be a hook-shaped scar here, from where the Man had cut her…but it, too, was gone!

A faintly keening whine seemed to erupt from her as she nearly tore the tunic hauling it up. Her stomach and side were the same…whole and unmarked save the odd crimson lines. Her ribs stood out in stark-relief but the star-burst scar from where that batarian had stabbed her, the thin parallel stripes over her ribs from where the thresher maw's scales had sliced her armor and her flesh…they were all gone, not even the faintest trace of them left.

She screamed, a sound of grief and fury as her fist slammed into the mirror. Her reflection spider-webbed and then shattered, glass raining down into the sink.

"_What did you do to me?"_ she roared at the kaleidoscope of eyes that now watched her from the remaining bits of mirror. "What did you fuckers _do?"_

Gone. All gone. Her medals, the only marks of distinction she had ever respected…they'd wiped them out, erased them as if they'd never been. She gripped the edge of the sink so tightly her knuckles turned white, ignoring the few small cuts she'd suffered from hitting the mirror. Her fury overcame her body's miniscule strength for a moment and she sagged down into a sit.

Gripping her hair, she tried to concentrate. Hurt. She had to have been very badly hurt. Perhaps she _had_ been burned. That would explain the decom chamber and her missing scars. Whatever had happened, she'd been out long enough for her hair to grow to almost three times its normal length, for her muscles to atrophy to the point she felt like she'd run a marathon just walking across the room. Weeks, easily…perhaps months.

She struggled to remember. Saren, the Citadel…was she hurt in the attack? No…no, she remembered the awards ceremony afterward, talking to the Council. The smug turian ass had thought she'd asked the Alliance to save the _Destiny Ascension_ for them. Yes, _that_ she remembered.

Ok, what after that? Geth. They'd sent her and the _Normandy_ to clear out pockets of geth…a frustrating prospect at best. She'd been venting to Liara about the stupidity, the futility of it all when Joker's voice-

It all came rushing back at a fevered pace. Joker. The attack. Shouting at the pilot to get to the goddamn pod, and Liara-

"Liara," she breathed, a new concern speeding her heart. The _Normandy_ had been attacked, horrifically. She remembered ordering Liara to get everyone to the lifeboats before she went up to the CIC to fetch Joker herself. She remembered all but throwing the man into the pod and then…

…then _nothing_. Everything just went black. She must have been injured in an explosion, maybe, and somehow Joker had gotten her into the pod. An explosion would explain being burned, explain the clean room and her missing scars.

But Liara? Williams, Garrus, and the others…had they gotten out safely?

Struggling back up to her feet she fished the pistol out of the sink. She had to find them, or find out what happened to them. And to do that, she needed to find out just what the _fuck_ was going on.

Ten minutes later found her in what had to be the mess hall, or some kind of cafeteria. Bodies were everywhere, all wearing tunics emblazoned with that strangely familiar symbol. She still couldn't pinpoint it, and didn't have time to try. Every console she found was either burned out or required some kind of encryption code. One had worked…somewhat, but all that it had spilled out was some man lamenting that he wished the boss would 'kick some extra credits' his way.

Once more, briefly, that woman's voice had sputtered over the comm, saying something about a shuttle bay, but it had cut off nearly as quickly as last time.

Mechs, however, she was finding plenty of. Four lay scattered about the ground in dying spits of electricity, her latest work. Retrieving a thermal clip from a dead metal corpse she popped out her overheated one and slid the new one into place. As she did, she heard a sound coming from just outside the door.

Drifting over silently she put her back to the wall just to the left of the open doorway, holding her breath. As a figure stepped through she swept in, slamming her elbow between a set of shoulder blades and slamming the form to the ground.

A bark of spent air marked this one as most definitely _not_ a mech. Holding him down, she pressed her pistol to the back of his skull. The figure, a human man, froze.

"Do not move a _fucking_ muscle if you don't want me to air out your skull," she hissed.

"It's _me_," he protested, though he was smart enough not to move. "It's Jacob! What are you doing?"

"I don't know any fucking _Jacob_," she snarled back. "I want some goddamn answers!"

"Wait, I…you're not Miranda…holy shit. _Shepard_?"

"Start talking!" she barked.

"Hey, hey, ok…shit…I know you must be confused. You weren't supposed to be awake yet, not for another three weeks. I guess Miranda woke you up when this mess started to go down. Look, I'm not your enemy. My name is Jacob Taylor."

"Where are we? Do you know what happened to me? Where's Liara?"

As she spoke she was frisking him with one hand, quickly pulling a pistol from his belt and making sure he had no knives hidden in his boots. Noticing a small biotic amp plugged into the back of his skull she popped it out, ignoring his faint grunt of pain as she did so. Satisfied he was unarmed she eased back and got to her feet, keeping her gun trained on him as he slowly got to his feet and turned around.

He didn't look like a doctor, or a medic of any kind. He looked, in fact, like a marine, his clothes bearing that same strange insignia. He was wise enough to keep his hands in sight, but he kept staring at her like she was some kind of star from a sensory band.

"There's not enough time to go into a full explanation," he told her. "Short story is this: your ship, the _Normandy_, was attacked and destroyed. You…ah…were brought here. You've undergone some extensive medical procedures and you aren't quite healed completely yet."

"I put that all together on my own," she snapped bitterly. "What about my crew? Are they all right?"

"Most of them got out fine. A few didn't make it, mostly those on the lower decks. Pressley, your XO, died in the initial attack."

"What about Liara? Is _she_ ok?"

"The asari? Yeah, she got out fine. Chief Williams too. Neither were hurt."

Liara was all right. Shepard was startled at the amount of sheer relief just knowing that brought.

"So what's the sit now? What's with all the fucking mechs?"

"They provide security for this station," he answered. "Someone hacked them, apparently. They've been wiping out everyone they've come across, trying to get to you."

Her jaw tightened, her eyes shifting ever so slightly. Trying to get to _her_. All these dead people, all this carnage…because someone was trying to kill her.

_One of Saren's supporters, probably…or a batarian merc with a hell of a grudge. _

"All right, Mr. Taylor. That woman on the comm system…the Australian…?"

"Miranda, she heads this pro…station."

Her eyes narrowed, not missing his correction. "Miranda. She said something about a shuttle bay. We're going there. Now."

Stepping forward she flipped his pistol around in her hand, offering it to him butt-first. As he took it she passed him back his amp as well. "I'm _trusting_ you," she warned firmly. "Don't give me a reason or I _will_ fucking kill you, understand?"


	3. Chapter 3

It was amazing how much blood the human body held. Despite her years as a marine, despite everything she'd seen in her life, it always took her by surprise…that sheer volume of blood.

It happened as if in slow motion. The woman, dressed identically to Jacob, was running down the corridor toward them. She held no weapon. Her short, ginger hair flew back from a frantic, wide-eyed face. Behind her, looming like a demon at the gates of Hell itself, was a full heavy mech. Almost too big to fit in the hall, the massive construction glimmered a reflection of the fire that bloomed from its shoulder launcher. The woman seemed to rise into the air slightly, before her body split and came apart in a terrific flood of blood, fire, and meat. Shepard felt the wet slap of it over her face and chest as she was picked up off her feet by the force of the explosion. She felt the tiny sting as flecks of bone spit over her cheeks and neck. She felt the slap of pain as her tailbone came down on the hard corridor floor.

Sound struck her a breath later, seeming to slam her ear-drums into her skull. Skidding, she rolled onto her side, and then lurched to her feet. Turning toward the mech, all sound but the painful after-ring of the blast drained out of the world, Shepard charged forward.

Jacob had been thrown aside by the force of the rocket as well. Disoriented, in shock, he turned to a sit and blinked stupidly as the small woman in blood-stained scrubs charged toward the heavy mech without hesitation. The machine quickly oriented on her, rattling gunfire peppering the wall and floor behind her as it tried to peg this organic madly rushing up on it.

Just as she reached it Shepard suddenly ducked down, sliding along the floor right underneath the mech, like a z-gee ball player skidding into home. The wet blood still covering her made her slippery enough on the polished metal that she lost very little of her speed. Stumbling back up to her feet, now behind the heavy, she wrenched a fire extinguisher off the wall.

The mech rotated on its waist, guns lighting up again a breath before a slap of foaming white slapped over its head, blocking both its infrared targeting and its optical sensors. Blind, the mech madly fired, guns ratcheting in a fury of flame.

Every inch of her body felt like it was burning, every motion of muscle strained as if it would tear off her bones under its own power. Still holding the spent extinguisher she slammed the butt of it against the chest panel of the mech, popping it open. Ignoring the searing snap of sparks she gripped hold of its power core and ripped it out. The furious gunfire died as the mech sagged, lifeless.

Shaking terribly from the exertion, Shepard swayed a little on her feet as she paced back a step or two, the extinguisher lowering before she stumbled down into a sit. Jacob forced his way past the dead mech and ran over.

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. Most of her hair had come loose of its knot and hung in sheets over her face. Her shoulders quaked uncontrollably.

"No, just…I'm… just a little out of shape," she panted.

"Out of shape?" Jacob's brown eyes were shocked. "You just took out a heavy mech with a fire extinguisher!"

"Yeah I…I guess," she mumbled. He took her arm and helped her to her feet. She felt as weak as a new born foal, her heart racing so fast she couldn't tell one beat from another. If they didn't get to safety soon she feared she would completely collapse-

Whipping suddenly to the left she lifted the extinguisher in front of her face. A bullet panged off of it, denting the side and ricocheting into the wall. Snatching Jacob's pistol she smoothly lifted it and fired. The face of the small mech at the end of the corridor exploded and it sagged down with a dying whine.

_Holy fuck…_

The extinguisher fell from nerveless fingers. "H…how did I do that?" she whispered, then looked at Jacob, anger lifting in place of shock. "How the _fuck did I do that_?"

"I…I don't know," the man replied, and his bafflement seemed honest enough at least. Even so, Shepard's mind was swimming, her temper raging to the fore.

"Tell me _what the fuck is going on_!"

"I told you-"

"_No_! You told me I was hurt, healing, and someone hacked these fucking mechs to take me out! That doesn't explain these fucked-up…_things_ all over me, why I feel like I can barely move and yet _I just fucking blocked a bullet I didn't even know was heading my way_!"

"Shepard, please…there's just no time. I'll tell you everything, I swear, but we have to get off this st-"

_{Hello? Can anyone hear me?}_ A male voice suddenly crackled over a nearby console. Both Shepard and Jacob turned their heads toward it, before Jacob strode over. _{Is anyone reading me?}_

"Wilson, is that you?" Jacob asked, hitting the connect command.

_{Taylor! Thank God…I thought I was the only one left alive!}_

"No, I'm here with Shepard…where are you?"

_{Shepard? Wha-…she's awake? How- never mind. You gotta get to the shuttles.}_

"That's the goal. Where are you?"

_{Server room B. I have an infrared of the station pulled up…ok. Fastest route for you is through maintenance. But you gotta book!}_

"On our way," Jacob replied, then looked at Shepard, jerking his chin toward a far door. "That way. We should be able to cut directly through the middle of the station."

Shepard scooped up her pistol and followed at a weaving trot, her brain still swimming. She stumbled more than once as random, rippling muscle spasms crawled under her skin, only intensifying the exhausted ache.

"You're a marine?" she asked as they reached the maintenance door.

"Yeah, was. Alliance," Jacob replied, working on getting it open.

"Was…not anymore?"

"Not exactly," he said. The door popped free and he muscled it open, ushering her in.

Pistols lifted in tandem as more than a dozen mech face-lights bloomed out of the darkness.

* * *

><p>Always trust your gut.<p>

That was the first rule Shepard had ever learned. As a child, once she had escaped the Room, Shepard had lived in hot narrow vents in New York's subway system, stealing food and smokes and anything else she needed to survive. There was no room for humanity in such a situation, not that it mattered. Nothing in Shepard's life at that point had shown her what humanity even _was_. She was born an animal, raised an animal, and she lived like an animal.

Survival of the fittest, and animals survived with their instincts.

Even after she had joined the Reds and been arrested, even after Nan and Paul and the institute and joining the Alliance, Shepard's gut feeling had never failed her.

Sitting here, an overheated pistol with a jammed heat-sink dangling from her hand as she watched Jacob treat the leg wound of the man propped against the computer bank, Shepard's gut could not have been any more plain.

This Wilson ass was trying to kill her. He could not be any more obvious about it if he screamed it in her face.

She knew him, somehow. Faint echoes of his voice, his face, she could recall like a distant and fading dream. According to Jacob, he had been the medical lead in charge of her case, which might explain why he looked and sounded familiar. She had no memory of waking up or of hearing him but she'd heard that people in comas or chemically kept unconscious retained some subconscious awareness of their surroundings.

Fucking asshole didn't look like a doctor though. He looked like…well, a fucking _asshole_.

That he was trying to off her wasn't in question. For one, he'd directed them into that maintenance area…which was absolutely crawling with mechs. They'd barely gotten out of there. He'd pulled up their position on the infrared…there was no way he could see _them_ and _not_ see the mechs clustered right where he directed them to go. His lame excuse was that the mechs were everywhere on the station, and yet Shepard had seen whole corridors completely deserted of life, organic or otherwise.

Just before they'd reached his location he had screamed out over the comm that the mechs had shot him, but there wasn't a goddamn mech in the room…alive or otherwise. And a single shot in the leg? _Seriously?_ Mechs didn't aim for legs. They aimed for chests and heads, seeking out the kill-shot, _always_.

He was incredibly defensive about it too, frantically explaining to Jacob even as the man tended him that he'd been trying to figure out who had hacked the mechs and override it when he'd been shot.

Jacob, to his credit, didn't seem like he entirely believed Wilson either. At his skeptical look, Wilson gestured to his leg now slathered in medi-gel. "_I was shot_! How do you explain that?"

Shepard caught his eye and smirked. Shifting the jammed pistol in her hand, she pressed the barrel against her thigh in a slow, obvious manner and tapped the trigger meaningfully. He scowled darkly but she could see the fear, the uncertainty, behind his eyes.

Not that Shepard planned to kill him…just yet, anyway. He was trying to off her, yes, but she wanted to know _why_. She'd been out, helpless and healing, for weeks at least. If he was really the medic in charge of her case, then he'd had a thousand times, _easily_, to put her down. Being a doctor he could even make it look like natural causes if he wanted, it wouldn't have been hard. Why hack mechs to attack an entire medical station just when she was healed enough to become mobile? It made no sense, unless he was a fuckin' dupe, taking creds from another source. If he'd only been approached recently, it would make sense…and that meant someone _else_ out there was actually the one gunning for her. If she wanted a chance in hell of finding out who that was, Wilson needed to stay alive long enough to tell her.

"Look, we just…we need to get to those shuttles, get out of here," the man said hurriedly. "Before they kill us too."

"Shuttles aren't too far," Jacob agreed. "You got the comm working at least partially. We need to try and contact Miranda-"

"She's dead," Wilson huffed. "The mechs were all over the sector she was in. She's hamburger!"

Jacob snorted. "Miranda can hold her own against a bunch of mechs, even heavies. She's alive."

"Then _she's_ the goddamn traitor! Has to be! She-"

"That's enough," Shepard grumped. Gripping hold of a console she pulled herself to her feet, scowling in irritation at her own weak trembling. "Right now I don't give a _fuck_ who's a traitor and who isn't. I don't know any of you goddamn people from Adam, get me? We can sort out the bodies once we're off this station."

She dropped her useless weapon and as Jacob helped Wilson to his feet, she moved over and pulled the medic's pistol from his belt. Her brown eyes were sparking dangerously as she smiled.

"You won't be needing this, now will you Doc?" she said, checking the safety and ratcheting a new heat sink into place. Wilson looked a little pale, sweat sheening his upper lip.

"The mechs…" he started to protest weakly. Shepard clucked her tongue and shook her head a little.

"Oh, I'll protect you from the _big bad_ _mechs_, don't worry," she cooed.

"Oookay, this is getting tense," Jacob intervened. "Look, we all have to work together to get to those shuttles. Shepard, if I tell you who we are…who the boss is…will you trust me?"

"_No_," she said with a derisive snort. "But it'd be a goddamn _start_, don't you think?"

"What are you doing?" Wilson protested. "You can't tell her that!"

"The fuck he _can't_," Shepard snapped back.

"Look! I'm not going to lie to her," Jacob retorted. He had been a marine. He knew how important trust and disclosure were, especially to those who you were going to be fighting with, shoulder to shoulder. You didn't put your lives into the hands of someone you didn't feel you could trust.

"Fuck. _Fuck,_ this is not going to go well," Wilson lamented, dragging his hands over his sweaty skull.

"Shepard, the organization that we work for, that has been overseeing your…medical treatment," Jacob spoke carefully but without hesitation, "is Cerberus."

For a moment she could not place the name. Like Wilson's voice it rang familiar but any meaning behind it was lost in the fog of her still disjointed memories. Then her eyes went dark, lighting with flecks of danger as the pistol snapped up and aimed at Jacob's face.

Wilson let out a faintly alarmed squeak, covering his face, but to Jacob's credit he didn't so much as flinch, merely held her gaze sternly with his own, before nodding.

"Yeah," he affirmed. "_That_ Cerberus."

"You people laid a goddamn trap in a fucking thresher nest," she snarled. "It killed a squad of marines, nearly killed me and my team! Then you made an Alliance admiral 'disappear!' What…have I been 'disappeared' now as well?"

"I don't know about this admiral but it's true," Jacob confirmed. "Cerberus has done some…questionable things. But no, you haven't been 'disappeared'. It's complicated…and a story best told somewhere safe. I'll tell you the whole thing on the shuttle once we're out of this place, I swear."

Shepard knew liars when she saw them. This Jacob may not be a saint, but neither was he a liar. She searched his eyes for any trace of guile before finally lowering her pistol. "Then let's fuckin' _move_," she grumped. "The sooner I get those answers the better."

* * *

><p>The brunette woman that shot Wilson in the throat was tall and looked like a vid model. The lashes over her blue eyes didn't even flutter as she lifted the gun and pulled the trigger, erasing the startled, bald-headed doctor as if she were batting away an annoying bug.<p>

Shepard, irritated beyond belief, lifted her own weapon and fixed her aim between those blue eyes even as Wilson collapsed. Jacob was more vocal.

"Miranda! What did you _do_?"

"What should have been done several hours ago," she replied, her voice that same unmistakable Australian that had spoken in brief, broken snatches over the comm. If Shepard holding a pistol on her face bothered her she didn't show it, merely glancing at blood-spattered marine in scrubs coolly. "Wilson was a traitor. He reprogrammed the mechs, trying to take you out."

"No shit," Shepard replied dryly. "He couldn't have been more obvious about it if he were waving a fucking _flag_. But it _is_ kind of hard to interrogate him and find out who the fuck _hired him _when his goddamn jugular is pumping filth all over my bare feet!"

"Well, I see your temper is intact. That's good."

"Oh, honey, you are _about_ to see my fucking temper," Shepard glared.

"That's fine. May I see it aboard the shuttle?" Miranda asked, still completely calm. "Or would you rather have it out here while the station self-destruct I activated two minutes ago finishes its six minute countdown?"

Shepard blinked, lowering the gun a little. "What? There are _people_ on this station!"

"No. No one but the three of us are still alive. The mechs were very thorough, no one else got out. I activated the destruct when I saw you three approaching the bay on the infrared. The secondary records of your recovery here must be eliminated from the station databases…the most efficient way to do that is through the self-destruct."

With a glare that could have melted metal, Shepard stepped past Miranda and strode off toward the waiting shuttle just behind her.

* * *

><p>In the depths of space, there was no atmosphere to transmit sound, to fuel the flames of an explosion or rattle a shuttle with a shockwave. The only effect noticed when the station blew was a momentary bright flash of light that faded almost as swiftly as it had bloomed.<p>

Sitting across from the other two, Shepard felt weak almost to the point of being nauseous. She held the pistol rested on the knee of her scrubs but honestly, even if they threatened her she wasn't sure she would be able to lift it enough to fire. Not that it was really a concern, she supposed. They had hardly gone through all of this to simply kill her.

Of course, she still wasn't sure what 'all of this' _was_, exactly.

Looking up at them both through the still disheveled, lengthy locks of her hair, she said, "All right, Cerberus. Spill."

"Cerberus," Miranda stated, glancing immediately over at Jacob. "Do I have you to thank for her knowing that?"

"I didn't see any point in lying to her. I still don't," he answered.

"Look, will you just lay it down for me, plain?" Shepard demanded. "I've just had a fairly shitty day and as Jacob gathered I'm not exactly fond of you people to begin with. Someone had better start explaining some shit or I swear to fuck-"

"Very well, Shepard. Jacob is right," Miranda interrupted. "At this point complete disclosure is probably the wisest course of action."

"Do you remember the attack on the _Normandy_?" Jacob asked, leaning forward a little as he rubbed his hands idly together, forearms resting on his knees. Shepard had seen such a pose before…in doctors, in blue-shirts, in admirals…in anyone who had news to impart that they weren't quite sure was going to be well-received.

"Parts of it," she replied tersely. Her whole body felt like a goddamn toothache and was doing little to improve her mood. "I remember ordering the evacuation, going up to the CIC to get Joker. I remember shoving him into the lifeboat."

"And after that?" Miranda hedged cautiously.

"Not a goddamn thing until I woke up in that room on your station with those alarms blaring," she shot. "I take it by the decom chamber and this weird…whatever the fuck this shit is all over me…that I was burned pretty badly. An explosion, I guess?"

"Shepard," Jacob spoke softly, but intently, idly rubbing his palms together again. "After you got your pilot into that pod, a blast knocked you into space…compromised your oxygen. According to the lifeboat short-scans which managed to pick up your vitals, six minutes after you were flung into space…"

"You died," Miranda finished bluntly. "You were killed, Shepard. You fell with the rest of the wreckage of your ship into the gravity well of a nearby planet."

Shepard was aware of her own pulse as she stared at them, then scowled. "The fuck are you trying to pull? I was spaced…_died_? I can _maybe_ buy that…I've heard stories… people in compromised hard-suits that have been picked up two days after being spaced and revived. It's really fucking rare but _possible_, if they're flash-frozen in just the right way…but there's no _fucking_ way I could have gone through atmo and hit the fucking ground in one piece! The…the entry _alone_ would have generated temperatures of thousands of degrees and an impact of that speed…"

"Your hard-suit managed to protect you from some of the heat of atmo entry but it's true," Miranda stated. "You were burned beyond all recognition and in several pieces when your body was finally located."

"Jesus, Miranda, you could be a bit more gentle about it," Jacob chided.

"She's not a child, Jacob," Miranda returned.

"You're _both_ fucking insane!" Shepard stared.

"It's the truth, Commander. You were killed," Miranda replied. "It was several weeks before your body was recovered and remanded to us. The project we just left, the Lazarus Project, was devoted to no other end then to bring you back."

Shepard sat back, still staring at them. She was thinking about that fire extinguisher, about blocking that bullet, an act that should have been impossible even had she known the shot was coming. "So…I'm some sort of _clone_? A construct?"

"No," Miranda said adamantly. "You are the _real_ Shepard. No expense was spared. We wanted _you_ back, not a poor copy. All your memories, your personality, your experiences…it was essential they remained intact."

"_No expense was spared_? To do what you're talking about would have required…billions, _trillions_ of credits and…massive amounts of experimental, even _theoretical_ equipment…and even then it would take so long that-"

She broke off, looking from Jacob's grim face to Miranda's implacable one, and her jaw tightened.

"_How_ long?"

Jacob glanced at his companion, then back at her.

"Two years," he said finally.

"_Two years?" _she gaped. "I've been dead for _two fucking_ _years_?"

"No, you were _dead_ for six months," Miranda replied. "The biologic, electrical and chemical recovery of your primitive brainstem to the point it could independently control your body's systems…the few we had restored at that point…was accomplished then. You've been in a chemically induced coma for the last eighteen months as your higher brain, organ, and circulatory systems were fully repaired. The last month has been strictly devoted to re-growing your epidermal tissue. A process that, sadly, won't be fully complete for another three weeks."

"My epi…that's what these weird lines are, all over me?"

"Yes. We used microbiological technology…nanites…to regenerate and stimulate growth on a cellular and even atomic level. The lines will fade as the epidermal reconstruction completes."

"_Why?"_ Shepard asked, the word rushing out on a still unbelieving breath. Her head was spinning. This couldn't all be true…it was ludicrous! "If I really did die then _why_? Why throw so many resources to recover me and bring me back? I'm just a marine, that doesn't make any sense!"

"You're more than a marine, more than even a Spectre," Jacob replied. "You're a hero, an icon. What you did against Saren, against Sovereign…you've become a symbol, Shepard…not _just_ to humanity but to the entire galaxy. The Reaper threat isn't over. If there's to be any chance of standing against them we need a rallying point but more…we needed someone who knows the threat they posed, someone who could lead an army."

"No other soldier, human or otherwise, has ever done what you did," Miranda replied. "You are the galaxy's best hope of stopping the Reapers."

"Yeah, right. And _Cerberus_ has _no_ alternate agenda," Shepard scoffed. She wasn't a goddamn hero. Fuck, the Council hadn't even wanted to _listen_ to her.

"Like us or not, Shepard…you are sitting here now because of us. I'm not asking you to trust us. Right now we are heading to speak to our boss, the Illusive Man. All I want is for you to listen to him. After that, whatever you do is your own choice."

"The Illusive Man…yeah, that's not _the_ most fucking pretentious name I've ever heard…" Shepard grumbled. A loose lock of hair fell in her face and she shoved it angrily back with a trembling hand.

Noting the motion Miranda said, "I'm sorry you are still weak. Your muscles are atrophied. We were toning them with a combination of electric stimulation and passive physical therapy, and we had hoped you'd have a few days when you did wake up before you had to do anything…_strenuous_. Don't worry, you'll gain strength quickly with regular activity. We'll also want to do a number of tests to make sure your coordination and reflexes are-"

"I don't think her combat skills are in question," Jacob told her. "I saw her take down a heavy mech with a fire extinguisher. I think that speaks for itself."

"Reflexes," Shepard mumbled into her palm, before looking sternly up at Miranda. "Yeah, let's talk about my _reflexes_. Let's talk about how I _blocked a fucking bullet_ without even knowing there was a _gun_ pointed at me!"

Miranda lifted her brows slightly. "Not…_entirely_ unexpected," she said. "A fortunate side effect of some of the biochemical processes we had to utilize to re-grow and re-integrate your cerebral matter. It was not what we set out to do but restoring your complete memories and personality was the priority, and the experimental processes allowed us to do that. As well, there are some more _intentional _upgrades to your body you might notice. For one, it is relatively quick and easy to generate soft tissue but growing bone, even from established samples, is far more difficult and time consuming. Nearly all your bones were broken, most shattered, and some were unrecoverable. They were sealed, bound or replaced with metal implants. The alloy is incredibly strong and lightweight, however you may notice you weigh a bit more than a woman of your size should."

"Fuck that. I'm more concerned with the fact you took my fucking _scars_ away from me."

"Your…" For the first time, Miranda actually looked surprised, and a little baffled. "Your scars?"

"Yeah, my scars," Shepard retorted. She tapped her jaw. "I had one here. One on my collar bone. Several lines on my side and a battle-blade starburst right the fuck here." She slapped her hand lightly over her stomach, glaring.

"Most women would be happy their scars were gone," Jacob stated. Shepard's furious expression turned on him.

"Look… _Boy Scout_…do I seem like _most _goddamn women to you? I wouldn't be fucking _sitting here_ if I were most goddamn women! I earned those fucking scars, every damned one of them. I _earned_ them!"

"I'm…sorry, Shepard," Miranda murmured. "But even had we wanted to, it would have been impossible to preserve them. You were burned over ninety nine percent of your body…only some skin around your eye and on your scalp was unharmed. Most of the burns went down to bone…the rest was fused with melted pieces of your hard-suit…the heat of entry into atmo is what took your scars, not us."

Shepard sat back, wiping a frustrated hand over her face. This was unreal. All of it. Dead? She'd actually _died_, been gone two whole years, and some fringe terrorist organization had brought her back to life. She couldn't accept it. She didn't even know how to _start_ accepting it.

"We should test your cognitive function-" she vaguely heard Miranda saying.

"C'mon, leave her alone for a while," Jacob interceded. "Can't you see she's exhausted? Not to mention this is all enough to make _anyone's_ head swim. Let her acclimate a bit, process what she's been hit with."

"'She' is right the fuck here," Shepard grumbled, focusing on them again.

"Well, we're nearing the platform station," Miranda relented. "The Illusive Man has been extremely busy lately, chances are you'll have a chance to eat and sleep before he'll be available to talk to you anyway."

"All that and I'm not even a priority," Shepard muttered with bitter amusement.

"However I _will_ have to evaluate your memory and cognition before you meet with him. After what's happened I'd like to think….to _hope_ it was at least worth it."

"Yeah, you think that, because _I'm_ still not sure," she grumped, then lifted her head and focused on them again. "Where's Liara? Boy Scout said she wasn't hurt when the _Normandy_ went down. Where is she now?"

"I'm afraid Dr. T'Soni's current whereabouts are unknown to me, commander," Miranda replied evenly. "The Illusive Man may know more."

_She thinks I'm dead_, Shepard thought, setting the pistol on the bench beside her before leaning forward, threading her hands through her hair. _Liara, my crew…Anderson and Hackett, the Council and the Alliance, they _all_ think I'm dead. Nan…God, Nan! I can't even imagine what she's been going through._

Two years. She simply couldn't get her mind around it. Two goddamn years. It was unreal, a nightmare, all of it.

A damn nightmare that just wouldn't _end_.

* * *

><p>The platform station they arrived at was much larger than the station they had just left, and teeming with life. As Shepard followed behind Miranda, Jacob trailing along behind, she noticed more than one pair of eyes staring at her unabashedly.<p>

Of course, she _was_ barefoot, wearing blood-soaked scrubs, and had strange red lines all over her skin…she'd have probably stared at herself, too.

She was brought to a set of quarters, left alone. Almost instantly the scrubs were discarded and she was in the shower. The hot water felt fabulous as it streamed over her but seemed to leach the very dregs of her energy away. She barely managed to dry off and drag herself to the small bed before collapsing and falling into a sleep so thick she may as well have been comatose again.

She woke sixteen hours later, famished and hurting. Every motion still wanted to set her muscles afire but she felt a bit less weak than she had. Sitting up she noticed someone had brought her a tray of food. Too hungry to even care that it had been left while she lay not five feet away, asleep and naked as the day she was born, she immediately went over and began to eat. More ravenous than even she had expected to be, it was all she could do not to choke on it as she shoved bite after bite of eggs, toast, and bacon into her mouth. An entire carafe of coffee had been left and by the time the last of the food was gone, she'd drained more than half of it.

Stomach settled, feeling at least a little better, she started on a hunt for some actual clothing.

Miranda found her an hour later. Shepard had abandoned her quarters and hunted out a small gym. When Lawson walked in the commander was systematically throwing jabs into a weighted bag, her hair tied haphazardly back from her face, her lips thin and her jaw set. She was wearing a pair of gray sweat-pants and a white t-shirt…both of which bore fresh tears. The shirt was ripped on the right sleeve, the pants had a hole the size of a coffee cup on the right hip. Miranda lifted a brow at the obvious, deliberate rents in the fabric even as she leaned against a nearby weight-bench.

"Didn't care for the style?" she asked. Shepard's jaw rippled but she didn't bother to glance over, throwing another set of punches into the unfeeling canvas.

"I'm not wearing _anything_ that has your damn Cerberus symbol on it," she replied.

"I see," Miranda nodded. "Well, I will see if I can't arrange for some Cerberus-free clothes to be brought to your room…so that you don't have to tear the patch off of everything."

Shepard didn't respond, only continuing her assault. The clinical part of Miranda couldn't help but watch the way her muscles worked, the way her body pivoted with every strike. Though she was still too lean, gaunt with atrophy and IV nutrition, every motion flowed just right, with no catches, hesitations or obvious flaws in dynamic. Physiologically, it did seem as if the finished product had come out perfectly. With exercise and time, Shepard would be right back to her previous condition.

"I'm not a piece of meat. You can stop staring," Shepard said after a moment, pausing in her attack to wipe a wrist over her forehead, glancing over at Lawson darkly.

"No, but you _do_ represent a great deal of work," Miranda replied. "You cannot blame me for evaluating the results of my efforts."

"Yeah? So tell me, how do I stack up, sweetheart?" Shepard asked, holding her hands out as if presenting herself. "Am I everything you hoped for?"

"So far, yes," Miranda answered honestly. "Beyond regaining muscle density and the final stages of your skin regeneration, physically you could not be more perfect."

Shepard only grunted, slamming another quick roundhouse into the canvas, followed by a swift jab.

"Where's Liara?" She asked again.

"I already told you. I don't know the current whereabouts of Dr. T'Soni. It was not necessary for us to keep tabs on her. We were only concerned with you."

"Then how come I keep smelling bullshit," Shepard demanded.

"After you speak with the Illusive Man you're free to look for her if you'd like. It doesn't matter to me."

"Yeah, and when's _that_ going to happen? When does a woman he's spent trillions of credits and two years worth of time on become worth a fucking phone call?"

"This afternoon, actually. In about four hours. I would like to make sure your memories and higher reasoning centers are intact first-"

"My memories are fine. I remember everything," Shepard barked.

"Then you won't mind me asking a few questions."

"Knock yourself out," she grumped. "Just so long as you know I'm not going to stop punching while you do."

"Fair enough."

Straightening from her lean she folded her arms. "Where were you born?"

"New York City, Earth," Shepard answered. "Fucking pit hole of a room."

"How did your parents die?"

"Saving the fucking world."

"Shepard, I know these are uncomfortable questions but I need serious answers."

"Honey, right now the amount of concern I have for you and your goddamn 'serious answers' couldn't fill a fucking thimble. They OD'd on some twisted powder or another. Bitch just died. Asshole lived long enough to scream for a while and think a damn lizard was about to pop out of his skull, so he tried to shoot it. That's how they died."

"What's the name of the woman who took you in after you were in the institution?"

"Nancy Salgado," Shepard grunted, the slamming of her fists into the canvas taking on a slightly more fervent tone. Sweat was quite obvious now on her face and bare arms, a result of her concentration and exertion.

"What gang did you run with?"

"Tenth Street Reds."

"What was the name of the man who ran the gang?"

"Fucking Sperry, that ever-loving prick!"

She punctuated her opinion with a spin and a roundhouse kick that sent the canvas bag swinging wildly.

"All right, past history seems intact-"

"You want more current history? Fine. Ilos is the name of the planet that Saren Arterius went to in order to sneak in the back door onto the Citadel. I shot the fucker in the head, the Alliance fleet took down Sovereign. The Council never believed a goddamn word I said and people died because of it. I left Kaidan Alenko behind on Virmire and set off a nuke so big there wouldn't even be DNA in the ashes to identify him. My favorite food is fried chicken with jalapenos, my favorite drink is whiskey, I really want some Gold-Label cigars right about fucking now, I listen to jazz and play the fucking guitar, my favorite color is blue and I want to know _where the fuck Liara T'Soni is_!"

Slamming the bag with another kick she turned and strode over to Miranda, her look almost murderous. Her voice, however, was low, if thick with promised violence. "Do my answers _suffice_, Miss Lawson?"

"Yes, I…that will be all."

"Good. I'm going to take another shower, then I'm going to eat enough food to choke a krogan. When I'm done with that, your pretentious boss had better be ready to talk to me because I do figure I owe you at least that for bringing me back to life. After that, I'm a ghost. _Gone_. Dong ma?"

"Yes. I understand perfectly, Shepard."

"Good," Shepard smirked without mirth, then stepped away, slamming out of the small gym. Miranda shook her head with a sigh.

"Yes," she said to the empty room. "Her temper is _definitely_ intact."


	4. Chapter 4

"Hey, you look like you could use this."

Shepard was sitting on a hard plastic bench in some kind of waiting room at the top of the station. Stark, gray, the room had nothing to offer save a triptych of windows showing the black of space and the cool, blue and violet planet the platform orbited.

She was hardly admiring the view. One arm draped over her lap, the other one planted elbow-first on her knee, her fingers threaded through her still too-long hair. She'd tied it back again but as the length was uneven, several strands had slipped loose and hung over her cheeks.

Her thoughts a million miles away, when the voice came she only glanced up, blinking dumbly.

It was the Boy Scout, Taylor. In his hands he held two insulated mugs of coffee, one extended in her direction. Never one to turn down free brew, Shepard bobbed her head and accepted it.

"Thanks," she murmured.

"Hey, a person finds out they died and were nailed back together by a bunch of terrorists, the least they deserve is joe, don't you think?"

Her smirk was faint, distracted, and she sniffed at the mug as he sat down next to her. "Not Irish?" she lamented.

"No, sorry. You gotta work harder to earn an Irish," he joked lightly. He was grateful to see that smirk reappear, distracted and wane though it was. He'd take a smirk over a fist to the face any day.

As she sipped at the brew he jerked his chin toward a door on the far side of the room. "Miranda go inside?"

"Yeah, she's chatting with your boss," she snipped. "Guess he arrived just a few minutes ago. Sǐ pì yǎn."

"That's Chinese, wasn't it?"

She grunted an affirmative, taking another sip of her coffee.

"Huh. I didn't know you were Chinese."

"Not," she replied.

"Oh."

Before he could decide whether or not it would be wise to ask her how she had learned it, the far door opened and Miranda emerged.

"Shepard, he's ready for you."

"Oh, he is," she sniffed sarcastically, then passed Jacob her mug. "Sorry, Boy Scout. His Highness has summoned me, I must depart."

Taking the mug he rose as she did, an old habit his mother had made sure was deeply ingrained. Manners, always, especially around women. You took off your hat inside, you held out chairs, and if a lady rose from a chair you always rose right along with them…even _if_ that lady was a trained N7 marine that technically outranked you.

As he watched Shepard head toward the far door he stepped up beside Miranda, shaking his head. "I got ten creds on Shepard breaking his nose."

"He's not actually _here_, Jacob," Miranda reminded him.

"Doesn't matter. I saw her in action, remember? She wants it bad enough, she'll figure out a way."

* * *

><p>As the door slid shut silently behind her, Shepard moved down a short set of stairs and into a small room.<p>

A small, notably _empty_ room. Its only feature was a softly humming holograph pad.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," she growled, before striding forward onto the pad. Sensing her weight and her body heat, the grid activated and the room around her was replaced by a holographic projection of another room. A man sat in front of her, grandly posed in front of an enormous set of windows that displayed an almost dangerously close sun.

He wasn't a bad looking guy, she supposed. Sharp suit, middle-aged, and he wore both well. His fingers rested on the rim of a cup that held what looked like brandy, a smoke sending lazy curlicues up into the air.

"Shepard," he greeted. Immediately she looked around, as if expecting someone to be behind her.

After a moment, his brows knit. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for Dorothy and Toto," she replied dryly, looking back at him as she folded her arms. "Seriously…all you need are some fire-jets and dramatic music, _Mr._ _Oz_."

"Good to see you haven't lost any of your sarcasm."

"Good to know I wasn't even worth you showing up in _person_."

"Shepard, you are worth a great deal to me," he told her calmly. "But surely you, of all people, can understand the need for certain…security."

She grunted. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with, all right? Apparently you spent more money than most governments can even print just to bring me back. Tell me why so I can tell you to fuck off and go home."

"I know you don't care for Cerberus, Shepard. You've had some difficulties because of us in the past. But Cerberus is fighting for humanity. Its advancement, its security, and its evolution."

"Killing marines by planting a distress beacon in the middle of a thresher nest…how is that advancing the cause of humanity?" she demanded.

"Shepard, unfortunately I don't have the time to explain to you all of our successes…or our failures. I am the first to admit that mistakes have been made in our past…we learn from our failures, and we progress. It is how anything, individual or society, grows and flourishes. Right _now_, the biggest mistake we could make would be in not acting."

"Go on."

"Cerberus believes the Reaper threat is real," he stated. "The Alliance, the Council, the governments of the other worlds across the galaxy…they would all like to believe that they are safe, that the story was a myth or some wild tale, or that the danger has been thwarted…but we both know it's not. I have seen more than enough evidence to convince me of the Reapers' designs and the very real danger they pose to not only humanity, but every other sentient species in existence. For now, thanks to you, the Reapers are still trapped in dark space, but it seems they are using others to forward their own agenda."

"What others?"

"Over the last two years, while you have been sleeping, entire human colonies have gone missing. There are no signs, no traces of what happened to them and no bodies are left behind. No other races have suffered losses, just us. The Alliance would like to chalk them off to random slaver attacks or other such nonsense and refuse to investigate them further…I know better. Someone, somewhere…is kidnapping our border colonies, commander. Every man, woman and child. Thousands have already gone missing, and if we don't stop them, thousands more will follow."

He took a drink of his brandy and looked at her intently. "All I am asking of you is to go to the latest colony to have been abducted. See for yourself, with your own eyes, what is going on. Afterward you can make your own choice…return to the Alliance and face months of debriefings and interrogation, tied up in red tape as they try and figure out exactly where you've been the last two years, or…"

As he took a draw on his smoke, the cherry brightened, illuminating his eyes in a way that revealed they were cybernetic.

"…or you can take advantage of our enormous resources to go after the missing colonists and their abductors. Unlimited funds, a ship and crew, and free reign. No red tape. No hoops. It will be your decision."

Her brown eyes darkened even further as she brooded over what he'd said, the muscle in her jaw flexing slightly. She wasn't convinced. Even _if_ what he said was true, then damn straight she would go back home. The Alliance might try and tie her up with red tape but she was still a Spectre. She'd bludgeon the fuckers into reinstating her and getting her after those abductors, and _fuck_ Cerberus.

"Just head down to this last colony and have a look around, that's _all_?"

"That's all. If you do that, and still want to leave, I'll pay for your shuttle back to Alliance space myself. You'd be back on Earth in less than twenty-four hours, and you would never hear from us again."

She pursed her lips, then bobbed her head. "Fine. But first there's something I want to know."

"Of course."

"Where is Liara T'Soni?"

"Yes, Miranda told me you'd been asking. I'm not entirely sure," he told her. "After your death she fell off the grid for a while. Recent intel suggests she is working for the Shadow Broker, subversively. As such she is probably using a number of aliases and her exact whereabouts are well-hidden."

"_Liara_?" Shepard scoffed. "Liara hasn't been subversive a day in her life! What could she _possibly_ be doing for the Broker?"

"People change, Shepard," he shrugged. "I am just repeating what intel I have been able to glean. If I hear anything more on where she might be or what she might be doing, I'll pass the information along to you. To show my good faith, I'll even do so if you decide to go back to the Alliance."

"Yeah, I'll believe _that_ when I hear it," she grumped. "Fine. If I'm going to this colony I want to go as soon as possible."

"Miranda is preparing transportation to Freedom's Progress as we speak. You can be underway immediately."

It was said so idly, and yet his words had an immediate effect. Shepard abruptly straightened, eyes first narrowing and then widening as she dropped her folded arms. Her face, still pale from too much time under artificial light, grayed even further.

Not bothering to speak, Shepard turned and vanished as she strode out of the holographic grid's reach.

Reaching out to the console on his chair, the Illusive Man switched off the pad, then activated a file. A woman's face appeared as he took a slow draw on his cig, his cybernetic blue eyes implacable.

She was an older woman, stout, with short gray hair and a charming, grandmotherly grin. She beamed sightlessly up at him before he exhaled, the cloud of smoke washing the image away.

* * *

><p>The cool night sky was brilliant, distant stars like chips of ice behind the sailing cliffs. Tall, graceful trees meticulously planted and trimmed, waved gently in a slight breeze scented with fruit. The small cluster of prefabs and squat, stick-built structures were lit warmly, a cheerfully inviting oasis in the otherwise dark landscape.<p>

The wind picked up suddenly, whipping in strong eddies and down-blasts as the shuttle drifted in, lowering to the tiny concrete landing pad at the edge of the colony. Barely had it settled than its door was lifting open, disgorging a figure in a hard-suit.

Miranda hadn't yet had the chance to do anything about the rest of the clothing, but she had managed to make sure that Shepard's hard-suit had been cleared of any Cerberus insignia. Quickly painted, it bore a matte, dull appearance. Miranda and Jacob's suits, however, were still emblazoned over the chest and arm-guards with the yellow, white and black insignia.

As she emerged from the shuttle behind Shepard, Miranda dropped a HUD eyepiece down in front of her right eye. "Infrared isn't showing any heat signatures larger than rodent life in the immediate area," she reported, even as Shepard unshipped her rifle and moved off of the landing platform, heading to the small gate that led into the colony proper.

"Where's she going?" Jacob asked, looking at his companion. Miranda only shook her head grimly and followed, leaving Taylor to trail along behind, both pulling weapons as well.

Even hurried, Shepard moved like a seasoned marine, scanning every corner, constantly noting possible ambush points, shifting shadows, and areas of cover. As if she had been to the colony before she trotted down a set of stairs into a small plaza. Empty tables and benches dotted the plaza, lights strung festively overhead. Trays, plates, and cups littered the tables, some still half-filled with food or drink, giving the impression that the whole party had simply stepped away for a moment.

"Kind of creepy," Jacob murmured. "Looks like they just vanished in the middle of dinner-"

Miranda nudged him with an elbow, then indicated the commander. He looked over just as Shepard vanished into a doorway, and the pair followed after her.

The door was to a house, one of the few stick-built structures. A small cottage, plants and flowers draped from the rooftop, which had been covered with dirt and sod to double as a garden. As Miranda and Jacob stepped within, the man slowed and stared around him.

The place was decorated in warm, soft, and round. Overstuffed cushions topped cozy looking chairs perfect for old friends to visit. Several books, the really old-fashioned kind with actual paper and bindings, were neatly stacked along low shelves. A vid screen near one wall was on but dark.

At the top of the shelves were several electronic picture frames, silently displaying images for several seconds before shifting to new ones. A boy, beaming at a birthday party, his head shaved and the bright lines of surgical incisions still visible. The same boy, there on a beach, silhouetted against a setting sun the color of oranges as he threw a handful of crumbs up to hovering sea-gulls. Another of him, scooting toy trucks across the floor.

Then a girl, older…fifteen or sixteen, with brooding brown eyes half-seen under lengths of black hair. She was smiling at the boy as they both sat in sand, bathed in sunlight and pushing together the beginnings of a sandcastle. The smile threw him off but it was a second look at the eyes that brought realization.

"Shit…Miranda-"

"I know," she said softly, and gestured toward the back bedroom door.

* * *

><p>Shepard was within, her helmet off and resting on the bed. She was staring up at a huge framed image that dominated one wall…herself, age eighteen, in her full dress uniform.<p>

That was the day she had taken her oath, had been sworn into the Alliance marines. As she watched, the image slowly faded, replaced by another. She heard the other two enter but didn't look around as the next picture took shape…herself, Wrex, Tali, Garrus, Ash, Kaidan and Liara, all caught in the midst of a salute, faces solemn as they honored Matriarch Benezia.

Shepard's eyes fixed to the asari's sad face and her brown eyes seemed to grow slightly brighter, a touch more gloss.

The picture lingered only a few seconds, and then shifted again. This time it was of her and Paul, mugging for the camera with their arms around each other's necks. As it appeared, she heard Miranda softly clear her throat.

"Commander," she murmured.

"Did you know about this?" Shepard asked in a low, rough voice. Her eyes dropped from the picture frame to the shelf beneath it. Fresh flowers had been left there in a vase. To its left was a velvet stand holding a ribbon and a medal…a Mori Purple Heart, inscribed with her name. The award, created when the Alliance had been formed, was based on the old Purple Heart that used to be given for injury or death in combat. _That_ Purple Heart was now only given for injury, a small oak leaf cluster added to the ribbon for each subsequent qualifying injury the soldier might endure during their career. Shepard had one such Purple Heart with several clusters. Or, she _had_. It was probably a chunk of melted metal somewhere among the wreckage of the _Normandy_.

The Purple Cross was now awarded to the families of soldiers killed in combat or during war time. The Mori Purple Heart was only given to the family of a soldier who had died in combat while preserving the lives of others.

To the right of the flowers was Shepard's commendation she'd earned on Torfan. She'd given it to Nan because she couldn't stand the sight of it herself. Propped against it was a small OSD.

"I found out just before you did," Miranda replied as Shepard picked up the OSD, regarding it. There was no label, nothing to indicate what it might hold or why Nan would have put it there. "She may still be alive, Shepard…that's why we're here. To find them and bring them home, and to stop this happening to anyone else."

Opening one of the small pouches on her hard-suit belt, Shepard slid the OSD into it and snapped it shut. Turning she went to the dresser, opening a tiny jewelry box there. Dipping in, her gloved fingers withdrew with a tiny gold cross on a chain. Winding the chain around her wrist so it couldn't be dropped, she pulled her helmet on again and locked it down.

"Let's go," she snapped, striding out and leaving the other two to follow.

* * *

><p>The mech collapsed, shuddering with a low whine, half its chest gone. Gripping the front of its face plate, Shepard wrenched its head to the side, baring a roughly stenciled FP etched on the side of its neck.<p>

They had only gotten a third of the way through the colony, finding only empty houses, abandoned activities. Tools lay where they were dropped. Meals sat half-prepared or half-eaten. Doors stood open but valuables remained untouched. There were no signs of struggle, no signs of combat damage. Until the mech appeared out of nowhere, they'd come across nothing moving but the wind and themselves.

"This mech belongs to the colony," Jacob said, noting the stencil. "What was it doing, shooting at us? It should recognize us as human."

"Someone had to have hacked it," Miranda commented as Shepard straightened. "That means there's someone still here, hiding. There have never been surv-…people left behind before."

She changed what she'd been about to say at Shepard's sharp glare. Using the word 'survivor' implied the missing were, in fact, dead.

"Then let's find them," the commander ordered. "Do we know how many mechs the colony had as security?"

"Not many," Miranda replied, checking her omni-tool. "The colony must have been doing really well to even _afford_ mechs…ah, here we are. Colonial Affairs has the inventory list for Freedom's Progress. There's only four small mechs and a single heavy. Anything further they would have had to purchase on the black market, and likely for more creds than CA would have charged them. They're controlled by a small security prefab on the far end of the main square. We'll have to get there to shut them down."

"_Bullets_ will shut them down," Shepard grumped, "but whoever hacked them is probably hiding in there. We need to get there."

"This way, it's the most direct route," Jacob nodded, pointing to the left. "We'll have to cut through the water filtration offices but I doubt it'll be locked down…nowhere else in this place has been."

They headed off, crossing a small storage yard before spotting the filtration offices. As they neared, a second mech appeared, lifting its weapon and then sailing up into the air as Jacob snagged it in a biotic bubble.

_Like shooting goddamn balloons_, Shepard thought as she aimed and fired, taking out both its power unit and its main processer in two quick shots. As Jacob let it drop, Miranda suddenly spoke up.

"Shepard, be careful," she warned, and gestured toward the offices. "The building is well insulated but my HUD picked up a slight temperature variance…there may be someone inside."

"Check. Lawson, go left. Taylor, right. Flank and I'll bring down the door."

They moved forward, nothing but ghosts for all the sound they made. As the two Cerberus agents readied themselves beside the door Shepard swept in, her aim instantly focusing on a face plate as the door slid aside.

Quarians? They were quarians, all straightening in surprise as the marine entered. She counted six of them as they started to reach for weapons.

"_Don't_ do it," she warned sternly as Miranda and Jacob came up beside her. Almost at the same moment, a seventh quarian rushed in from some back room, immediately holding up her hands.

"No, _stop_! Everyone, hold your fire!"

It was hard to pick out an individual quarian from a group…not impossible, but hard. Gender was easy to determine but their environmental suits, unless extremely distinct, covered up most clues the other races used to recognize folk. If a quarian were a close friend, however, then subtle cues in stance and body language, habits of motion or idiosyncrasies could be a dead giveaway.

For Shepard, it was the voice that did it.

"Tali?"

The girl focused on her, head inclining slightly. She was clearly surprised, and confused. "I...yes, but…do I know you?"

Straightening a little, Shepard lowered her rifle slightly, holding her one hand out palm forward before lifting it and unlocking her helmet. She drew it off and as her face was bared, she could almost see the young quarian blanch.

"_Keelah_, it's not po…it can't be…_Shepard_?"

For Shepard, seeing Tali standing there was the first good thing that had happened since Joker's voice had suddenly shouted over the comm back on the _Normandy_. It was an anchor, a small bit of reality in this crazy fucked up bad dream. Finally, here was someone she knew and trusted, someone familiar.

Finally, here was a goddamn _friend_.

"Yeah, it's me," she said, then nodded toward the other quarians who were still holding their weapons to bear. "Mind asking your friends to lower their aim? I don't want to air them out but I will."

"Try it, _Cerberus_," the lead male hissed with surprising venom, prompting Tali to slap him lightly in the chest.

"Shut _up_, Prazza! I'm in charge here! Lower your weapons. Shepard _isn't_ Cerberus."

Half the guns lowered but Prazza and a pair of the others didn't budge. "Then why do her two little lackeys have the Cerberus insignia painted all over their armor?"

"_Lackeys_?" Miranda blurted indignantly.

"I don't know, Prazza! Shepard wouldn't…_I don't know_! Just put your guns down!"

Slowly the remaining weapons lowered. Tali stepped between the two groups a bit more fully, just in case, and returned her attention to her old friend.

"Shepard, it…it really _is_ you, isn't it? They told me that you had-…that you were _dead_."

"It's a very long story," Shepard replied. "But yeah, it's me. C'mon. I spent two weeks teaching you how to play poker so you could steal all of Joker's creds, remember?"

"Yeah," Tali's voice held both nostalgia and relief. Stepping forward she abruptly hugged the commander tightly. Shepard, keeping her rifle pointed at the ground nonetheless wound her other arm around the quarian and squeezed back.

"It's good to see you too," she said, understanding.

A moment later Tali released her, stepping back. "I'm sorry, that was…inappropriate of me," she said. "I just…when I heard you had died I…it felt like I'd lost a member of my family."

She shook her head, then her eyes widened noticeably, even behind her faceplate. "Does _Liara_ know you're alive?"

"No, I don't think so. Do you know where she is?"

"I…no, no, I-I talked to her, briefly, just after I got the news. We fell out of contact. _Keelah_, Shepard, if she knew you were alive-!"

"This is all very fascinating but don't we have work to do?" Prazza snapped.

Shepard and Tali's combined glares must have had nuclear power, because when they snapped around and looked at them, he seemed to melt slightly, taking a step backward.

"Bosh'tet though he is, Prazza is right," Tali shook her head. "Why are you here, Shepard?"

"We're investigating the missing colonists. Have you seen any of them? Or anything that might indicate what happened to them?"

"No. We're here looking for a quarian, Veetor. He came to this colony on his Pilgrimage. He sent out some kind of…garbled distress message a few hours ago."

"He must have been taken with the rest of the colonists."

"He wasn't. We saw him briefly when we landed…he ran into the colony and hid. I think he's the one that's hacked the mechs. The colony's heavy is parked just outside the security office. We were just trying to come up with a plan to deactivate or circumvent it when you came in."

"He _ran_?" Jacob blinked. "Why would one of your own people run from you?"

"Veetor was…always a bit flighty. Nervous. He may also have been injured in the attack, or his suit compromised. If he's ill, has a fever, he could be delusional," Tali replied.

"He's also the only witness to what may have happened here," Miranda told Shepard.

"Sounds like we have the same goal then, Tali," Shepard nodded. "How many entrances does that courtyard have?"

"We are _not_ working with Cerberus!" Prazza snapped.

"We are working with my _friend_," Tali shot back angrily. "If you don't like it you can go sit on the ship like a little baby _fishat'ai_! We can't get past that heavy alone."

"Give Shepard a fire extinguisher and she could do it all on her lonesome," Jacob joked. Tali blinked at him.

"A…_fire extinguisher_?"

"Another long story," Shepard snorted, then pointed at the map they had spread out. "So how do we do this?"

"W-well, the heavy is right here," Tali replied, moving over and pointing at the map. "There's two main access points to this square…here and here. I can take my team to the eastern side. If you come in from the west we can hit it from both directions. It should go down pretty quickly with that much fire on it."

Shepard glanced at the map and then nodded. The path around west was a bit of a longer route, but there were only three of them as opposed to the quarians' seven. They could move faster. Clapping Tali on the shoulder she turned back and picked up her helmet. "All right. Be careful, by our count there's still two smaller mechs roaming about."

"We already took them out," Tali promised. "It's just the heavy now."

"Cake," Shepard murmured, giving her friend a lopsided smile before she pulled on and locked down her helmet. "See you on the other side."

As they left the filtration offices and headed toward the other side of the colony, Miranda shook her head. "The quarians don't like us. This could be trouble."

"You mean the quarians don't like _you_, Cerberus," Shepard snorted. "And probably for a good fucking reason."

"I know Tali'zorah is your friend, but she's a quarian _first_," the woman continued, ignoring the insult. "Can we trust her?"

Shepard stopped and turned to the operative, glaring. "_I_ trust her with my goddamn _life_," she retorted. "_She's_ earned it. The jury is still out on _you_."

"I saved your _life_, Shepard, remember? Twice as I recall," Miranda returned hotly. "If I hadn't woken you early you would have died in that bio-bed-"

"You saved your _investment_," Shepard shot back. "Your _pet project_. And so long as you keep looking at me and seeing nothing but your 'work', then we have nothing to discuss. I give the respect I _get_, Lawson. If I'm a piece of meat to _you_, then you're a piece of meat to _me_, and you'd best think long and hard as to what that means when the shit hits the fan."

_{Shepard!}_ Tali's frantic voice suddenly interrupted, breaking over their suit receivers. Immediately Shepard turned away, replying.

"Tali? What's wrong?"

_{Prazza and the others ran on ahead! They think that you're going to take Veetor back to Cerberus. I told them you would never do something like that but they didn't listen. Oh, Keelah…they've reached the mech, and it's tearing them apart! You have to hurry!}_

Shepard immediately broke into a run, charging along the path to the now distinct sounds of gunfire and screams of pain. She could hear Jacob and Miranda both running just on her heels as she rounded a corner…and came face to face with a blank wall.

"Fuck! Tali! There's a goddamn gate blocking the route! It wasn't on the map!"

_{I got it, Shepard, one second…}_

The wall suddenly moved outward an inch, and then rumbled aside. As soon as there was room Shepard ran into the courtyard.

Three quarians were down, scattered like broken dolls, and it was clear they weren't going to get up again. Even as Shepard caught sight of the mech and lifted her weapon, the heavy crushed a fourth beneath its foot, a ton of weight all but turning the poor woman into paste.

Wildly Shepard gestured to the right, shouting at Miranda and Jacob. _"Take cover and hit it!"_

A rocket bloomed with fire and in the glow Shepard saw Tali turn and duck into a doorway. A breath later the explosion took down half of the building in a rain of concrete, plastic, and dust.

"_Tali!"_

_{I'm…I'm all right, Shepard, I'm not hurt,}_ came the relieving reply. _{I can't get back into the courtyard, I'm going to have to work my way around.}_

The last two quarians fell even as Jacob and Miranda opened fire. As the mech swiveled to focus on them Shepard unhooked a grenade from her belt, set the button, and then stepped into a crouch, swinging her arm as if bowling. The grenade skipped along the ground and rolled right beneath the looming mech.

The heavy barely had time to fire toward the two Cerberus agents before the grenade went with a cough. Not nearly enough to damage the heavy, the blast was just strong enough to shift its center of gravity. Unable to compensate fast enough, the heavy toppled to its side with a resounding boom.

Its arms came to bear as Shepard leapt out of the dark, a primeval cry escaping from between her grit teeth. The heavy fired into the air, each flash of flame playing over her helmet in a staccato. From the angle and the limitations of its own joints, the heavy was unable to actually hit her.

She landed on its chest, one foot planting on its neck to stop herself from sliding forward. In three seconds, she had unloaded enough ammo into its faceplate to overheat her thermal clip.

The heavy stopped firing, its guns whirring a moment before its arms collapsed to its sides, lifeless.

Climbing off the thing, she popped her thermal and then hit the radio.

"Tali, the heavy is down. I'm sorry but…it doesn't look like any of the other quarians made it. We're heading into the security office."

_{I'll be there in two more minutes,}_ Tali panted. _{Remember, Veetor isn't thinking clearly. I don't know what he'll do. He could be armed. Please, don't hurt him if you can help it.}_

"I promise," she replied. Jacob had already moved ahead, working on getting the office door open. As Shepard strode after him, Miranda paused, regarding the dead heavy silently a moment before following her two companions.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note:

Yay! Happy New Year, everyone!

Sorry this chapter is a tad short...I'm only here half a day today so I didn't have as much time to work on it. I think what it lacks in length, however, it makes up in content.

Maybe. Hopefully.

Anyway, I have a three day weekend ahead so the next installment won't be up until Tuesday. Everyone enjoy your holiday and be safe!

On a final side note, on a lark yesterday (because I was bored and in a slightly goofy mood) I fiddled around and, long story short...Del Shepard now has her own email AND facebook account! Her email is shepardcommander11 at gmail. I will be linking both that and the facebook account in my profile as soon as I get home so if you're at all interested, check there. If you don't want to wait, you can probably do a facebook search of Del Shepard and find her...it should be pretty obvious which one is her :)

The account will be used to provide updates on my fanfics, to answer questions and for just random fun. Some of it will be posted 'in character' and some not. I will also probably eventually set up a facebook for my original writing stuff, but who knows when that will be? Del should be restricted to just the fanfic.

I'm so totally rambling now. I'll let you get back to it without further interruption. :D

* * *

><p>It was dark inside the security prefab, the kind of close, almost ominous dark that seems to permeate homes and empty office buildings in the wee small hours of the morning. A bank of security vid screens cast the only illumination, cutting the figure sitting in front of them into sharp silhouette.<p>

No…not sitting. _Slumped_.

Shipping her pistol Shepard immediately moved forward to the young quarian's side. As she took hold of him and pulled him gently upright, he suddenly regained consciousness, revolting with a cry of alarm, smacking at her shoulder-pad.

"Hey, calm down," she urged. "No one's going to hurt you."

"No! No, you can't take me," he stammered frantically. "Monsters, I won't let the monsters-"

"Shh, look…" Reaching up she pulled off her helmet. "Look at me. Veetor, I'm not a monster, see?"

"H-human?" he breathed, relaxing a little. His face-plate shifted from her to where Miranda and Jacob stood silently watching, then back to her. Lifting a hand, he shakily touched her face. "Human…but…but _how_? Where did you hide? Why did the monsters not t-take you?"

"We just got here," she explained. "We're looking for the other colonists."

"Gone, they're all gone," he told her. "Everyone…they took everybody, the monsters…I couldn't help them, I…I ran away. I ran away and hid. Th-the mechs but…but no…no the monsters, and the swarms…"

"He does sound confused, Shepard," Jacob observed. "Shaken up. He may not be able to tell us anything."

"_No_! No, I c-can show you…I can show you the monsters…"

Reaching for the console in front of him he hit a series of commands. The softly glowing security vids lit up with images pieced together from all over the colony. Shepard straightened as she watched.

The quality was not very good…most colonies couldn't even afford a full camera system like this, even one on the cheap end. Between this system and the mechs, the colony had probably used most of their allocation funds for an entire year. Blurred and distant as it was, she could clearly see alien creatures…Veetor's 'monsters'…lifting and stacking limp human beings like cordwood. Occasional ripples of static distorted the images and strange dark spots seemed to be swarming around in the images.

Swarms. Veetor had said that, hadn't he? He'd said the word _swarms_.

"They look like Collectors," Miranda said, squinting at the figures moving about the complex. Shepard, unconsciously fiddling with the gold chain wound around her wrist, didn't take her eyes off the images.

"What would Collectors want with human colonies?" she asked. "They're strange but they've always used agents to arrange their deals, letting others do the gathering for them. Why _this_ all of a sudden?"

"That's a very good question," Jacob said.

She watched as the Collectors lifted another body, carrying it a short distance before dropping it like so much unfeeling laundry.

_That could be Nan for all I know. She never had an enemy in her life, never had a cruel word for anyone…and they treated her like_ garbage.

Jaw steeling she tore her eyes away and looked at Veetor again. "How did they get the colonists, Veetor? What did they do to them?"

"Swarms," he told her, trembling. "Everywhere, they came from _everywhere_, no one could move. I can't…I have to hide, I can't leave…they left but they'll be back, they'll come back for me, I know they'll come back."

"Swarms, Veetor? What swarms? What were they?" Shepard urged, but the poor boy only cradled his helmet in his hands, shuddering and weeping about how the monsters were going to take him too.

"He's useless the way he is," Miranda murmured. "He may have recorded some useful information with his omni-tool but even with interrogation I doubt we'll get anything else useful out of him."

Shepard looked up at her sharply at the word 'interrogation'. Miranda, missing the look, had turned her attention onto Jacob.

"We may as well at least try," she told him. "Grab the quarian and we'll take him back to the station-"

"What? You can't do that!" Tali, having finally worked her way around to the other side of the courtyard, appeared in the doorway. Shepard straightened as the little quarian storm-cloud clenched her fists. "He's _sick_! Traumatized! You can't just…_just_ take people and beat intel out of them!"

"Whoa whoa," Jacob held up his hands. "No one said anything about beating anyone. We won't hurt him. We just want to see if he can remember anything else-"

"_No_!" Tali snapped. "He needs to go home, to see a doctor!"

"Hey, that's enough," Shepard interrupted. "Veetor isn't going _anywhere_ except with Tali back to the Flotilla."

"With all due respect-" Miranda began, then broke off as a finger pointed sternly at her face.

"That is something you _never_ say to me again," Shepard told her, her expression imparting just how deadly serious she was. "Now. We've got the security footage."

Looking at her friend she said, "Tali, would you mind sending me a copy of Veetor's omni-tool data? And if he says anything useful about what happened here-"

"I'll let you know immediately, of course," she agreed. "Thank you, Shepard."

"All right. Lawson, Taylor, go back and wait at the shuttle. I'm going to help Tali get Veetor to her ship."

Her tone brooked no argument. It was the tone of a trained commander and natural leader, and more, it was the tone of someone who wasn't above breaking some teeth if she wasn't obeyed. Visibly irritated but saying nothing, Miranda turned and strode out of the security office. Jacob, less perturbed, nodded politely at the quarian.

"It was nice to meet you, Tali," he said, before he followed Lawson.

* * *

><p>The quarian's small ship was not far, parked beneath the cliff and beside the colony's small power plant.<p>

_Smart move_, Shepard thought, as she and Tali helped the injured Veetor inside. _The electromagnetic field put out by the plant would all but completely hide the ship from most scans._

As Tali got Veetor laid down and secured for the ride, Shepard went out to the ramp, sitting down. The gold cross and chain glimmered on her wrist. Balancing the tiny cross on her gloved fingers she watched the way the faint light reflected off its surface.

Tali moved down and sat next to her. "What have you gotten yourself into, Shepard?" she asked. "Working with Cerberus? A fake death?"

"Death wasn't fake," Shepard murmured, lowering the cross and looking over at her friend. "I died, Tali. I don't remember the final few minutes and I guess that's for the best but…I _did_ die. From what I understand somehow Cerberus recovered my body and spent the last two years and an unbelievable amount of credits nailing me back together."

"And now you feel you owe them, I suppose?" Tali ventured. "Is that why you're working with them?"

"_No_. They told me about the abductions of our colonies and when I heard that the latest was Freedom's Progress…I had to come. I…" she shook her head, her jaw tight.

Tali had grown to know Shepard very well over the months on the _Normandy_, tracking Saren. The woman was gruff, blunt…and most people did not like her initially. The first impression she gave off was usually that she was bad-tempered, irrational, and controlling. That wasn't the truth. Yes, she had a temper, and a foul-mouth but she was neither irrational nor controlling. She just didn't take bullshit, didn't coddle. It was very simple with her. Respect wasn't automatically given, it had to be earned. You earned her respect and you had it forever. She knew what had to be done and she did it. She gave everything of herself to her friends and her crew. She'd throw herself in front of a bullet rather than let it hit someone she cared about or was responsible for.

Tali had grown to look up to her a great deal on the _Normandy_. Not just because she was, as Liara had once put it, an 'incredible bad-ass' but because she treated Tali like anyone else, not 'just a quarian'. She defended her, took time out to check on her, to do things like teach her poker. She _listened_.

And right now, she needed someone to listen to _her,_ for a change. The expression on her face wasn't one of anger. Instead, Tali recognized that Shepard was struggling to keep control, to stay strong. She had never seen the commander cry, never saw her break down, but all the same, Tali could tell she was desperately close to doing both right now.

"Talk to me," she urged softly.

"Everyone thinks I'm dead," Shepard murmured. "Just last week I was on the _Normandy_ but…I wasn't. It was _two years_ ago. Two years just…just _gone_. I feel like I've been goddamn robbed, Tali. Lawson expects me to just be grateful and I _am_, I am glad to be alive but…at the same time, it feels like she, like _they_, stole _everything_ from me. All my friends… I don't even have a _career_ any more. And Liara-"

Her jaw tightened again and she shook her head, lips thin. "No one can tell me where the fuck she _is_! She thinks I'm _dead_, Tali! I don't know if she's ok. And Nan…I can't _imagine_ what she went through. First a husband, then her son, then me…and now this! She was _here_, Tali. This was her colony. And those fucking Collectors just _took_ her. She could be anywhere, I don't even know if she's alive! They were throwing people around like they were fucking _trash_…!"

Leaning her head forward, she planted her forehead in her hand, teeth bared in a grimace as she struggled against the wet heat behind her eyes. Despite her best efforts, tears escaped against her will and when she felt Tali's light hand on her back, a choked sob struggled to escape.

Had Tali been anyone else save for perhaps Williams or Nancy herself, Shepard would never have permitted such a display, however brief it was. Had she been Liara, Shepard probably would have completely broken down, the asari the only person she would ever willingly allow to see her in such a state.

With a faint sniffle, she wiped her gloves over her eyes, swiftly erasing the tears, quickly getting herself back under control. After a moment she spoke. "I just…I need to find them, Tali. Both of them."

"Then you _will_ find them," Tali affirmed.

"The Alliance thinks I'm dead. If I go back it's going to be a shit-fest. I'll probably be arrested, for one. Held, interrogated. They'll want to know where I've been or what I've been doing. Even _if t_hey believe me and I can somehow prove I'm not some kind of clone remote-controlled by Cerberus it'll be months before they'll even think of reinstating my status. There'll be _no_ chance of finding Nancy then, alive or otherwise."

"Then work with Cerberus," Tali told her. When Shepard looked at her, the quarian shook her head. "I know, I can't believe I'm saying it either, but we both know this is big, Shepard. Huge. You can't delay for months. Even if Nancy was not one of the abducted colonists, thousands of humans are vanishing, taken by these Collectors. And the Reapers are still out there. Who knows if they'll find a way back or not, even with Saren gone? I'm not saying work _for _Cerberus. But if they'll let you take advantage of their resources and if it'll help you stop these horrible things, then I say do it. Just as long as you need to, and then dump them like a poetic krogan."

Shepard couldn't help it. She snorted a laugh, smirking. "A poetic _krogan_?"

"Have you _heard_ a krogan recite poetry?" Tali asked. "It's _brutal_."

Reaching up Shepard hooked an arm around Tali's shoulders and squeezed her a moment, before releasing her. "I wish you could come with me. It'd be nice having at least one person I trust around, and I could use you."

"I wish I could too," Tali admitted. "But I have to get Veetor back and let the Admirals know what happened. Then I have…_another_ project I'm needed on. Hopefully it won't take too long. If you want, when I'm done I can request permission to join you for a while."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, that'd be good," she murmured. "I'd…best let you get on your way."

Wiping a hand over her face again she got to her feet, picking up her helmet. Tali rose as she did. Hugging the quarian again briefly, she gave her a light slap on the back. "Take care of yourself. I'd better see you soon."

"You too, Shepard. Be safe. I know the kind of trouble you get into."

Shepard smirked, shaking her head as she stepped down off the ramp. She lifted her hand in a good-bye as Tali retreated and closed the door, waving back briefly before she disappeared from view.

Like ice shot into the sun, any trace of happiness or levity seemed to vanish as the commander turned to head back to the shuttle, the tiny gold cross clenched in her fist.

* * *

><p>In front of the bay windows, the asari woman stood, looking out at the beautiful view but in truth seeing none of it. The bright, lively lights of Illium shone down on shining streets, restaurants, shops and teeming masses captivated by the glitz and glitter that had inspired no small number of songs or lengthy books of poetry.<p>

One could not imagine such a view could ever grow old…but it did, and with alarming swiftness. Her eyes saw none of it, focused away beyond the shimmering city to darker and far lonelier places.

She held a glass of pris para in her hand, the soft round swell of the crystal pressed lightly to her forehead. The faintly luminescent yellow-green libation had barely been touched.

In the background, low and sad, Flatwood lamented the summer days of years gone by. She swayed ever so slightly from side to side, as if caught in the gentle eddy of the man's smooth voice.

A cheerful chime startled her a little. Her eyes snapped back into focus and she lowered the glass, glancing around at her wall-screen. When she saw the contact displayed there she strode swiftly over, setting the glass down on a table as she passed, quickly accepting the call.

A man appeared on the large screen, wreathed in smoke. The details of the room behind him were difficult to see but he seemed to be sitting in some kind of overstuffed chair. A book, the old-fashioned kind with pages, was open and face down on one of the arms, as if she had interrupted his reading…even though _he_ had been the one to call.

"Good evening, Dr. T'Soni," he greeted. "Sorry to disturb you so late."

"Illusive Man," she replied. "Is she all right? Is she awake?"

"Awake and lively, as a matter-of-fact," he told her.

Letting out a simultaneous breath of relief and apprehension, Liara placed a hand flat over her stomach, sinking down into a chair. She closed her eyes a moment, then regarded him again. "How…how is she? How did she seem?"

"She still has some minor healing to do, some strength to recover," he replied. "But all indications point to a complete success of the project. Her memories and personality seem completely intact, and she is just as hot-headed as she ever was."

"Thank the Goddess," she murmured, then sat forward. "When can I see her? I-I can have a ship ready in an hour, it will give me a chance to pack, make arrangements-"

"Dr. T'Soni."

"Nyxeris can take care of any business contacts for a few days, and-" she rose out of the chair, already picking up her PDA.

"Dr. T'Soni!"

"What?" she paused, looking back at the screen. Leaning forward, he gestured at her chair again.

"We need to talk before you make arrangements."

"What about? You said she was fine-"

"Physically, yes, but it's not as simple as all that. Please, sit down."

Lowering back into the chair, PDA still in her hands, she lowered it to rest on her lap. "There is something wrong with her…_mentally_? You said that her memories were intact-"

"They are, and that's the problem," he told her gently. "There are many things to consider here, doctor. Every contingency must be thought through logically. You're a scientist. You understand the importance of this."

"I…yes, but, I don't understand. Why does the fact that she _remembers_ indicate a problem?"

He leaned forward again, clasping his hands between her knees, a faintly troubled expression crossing his face. "Dr. T'Soni, you _know_ the reason that we brought her back as we did. The Reapers are an ongoing threat. Humanity needs a champion, an icon they can look to and rally around, one that has their interests…and _only_ their interests, in mind. I'm afraid that…it is best if you do not see or speak to Shepard again."

"What?" she gasped, then frowned. "You _cannot _keep me away from her!"

"I know, I can't," he admitted. "But I _am_ asking it of you, doctor. I understand the feelings you have-"

"Do you?" she scoffed. "Then you should know there is nothing you can say or do that will prevent me from seeing her again!"

"And if I told you her life depended upon you staying away?"

"Are you threatening-"

"I hardly spent billions of credits bringing her back to hold her _hostage_, doctor. But you know what I'm telling you is the truth. You are a _distraction_. If Shepard is concerned with or distracted by you I guarantee she will not succeed against the Reapers or their agents. They are far too dangerous to risk anything but her utmost concentration. Need I remind you of the injury she sustained on Noveria?"

"That was-"

"She put her back on an incredibly dangerous adversary because she thought _you_ were in danger…and she nearly got herself killed because of it. Remember Feros? She risked herself again over concern for you. And far more recently, she _died_ because of you."

"Th-that's _not_ true," Liara gasped, trembling faintly. "Joker refused to-"

"Yes, Joker refused to leave the helm. But how long did she linger in Armament trying to get _you_ to leave so she could go up and get him? Those few minutes…_seconds_…could have made the difference between her actually making it into the pod with Jeff, and being ripped out into space. Her concern for you delayed her. Time and time again, her concern for you has put her into danger. You know I'm telling you the truth."

Liara felt sick. Her eyes swam with tears, her heart thundering. His voice gentled as he spoke again.

"I am sorry, doctor. But if you care about Shepard…if you _love_ her, then you know I am right. She is the only chance we have to stop the Reapers. Trillions of lives, billions of worlds, all rest in her hands. She cannot afford to be distracted for any reason, not if anyone is going to stand a chance against them."

She blinked, focusing on him again. The motion broke one of the threatening tears free, sent it sliding down her cheek. When she spoke, her voice was low, soft. "Even if…if you are right…even if I _agree_…_she_ will look for _me_."

He sighed kindly. "Doctor…._Liara_. Shepard cares for you, I won't lie. She has a small measure of affection for you but I am not entirely sure it is to the depth that you imagine. Honestly, she hasn't even _asked_ about you yet, she was more concerned with contacting the Alliance. That aside, she is extremely upset and confused. Everything in her life has been changed, torn away. Her career, her ship and crew, and now Nancy Salgado."

With every word he spoke, her lashes fluttered slightly, each seeming like an almost physical blow. Small measure of affection? Shepard hadn't even _asked_ about her? Then his final words registered.

"Wh-what happened to _Nancy_?" Liara gasped, eyes going wide.

"Information broker or not, I'm not surprised the news hasn't yet reached you," he told her. "It's been less than twelve hours…the Alliance hasn't even arrived yet. Freedom's Progress was the latest colony to disappear. Nancy Salgado, along with every other human being that lived there…is gone. Shepard is on her way back from there now. You can imagine how she feels."

"Oh, Goddess," Liara moaned, covering her face. Nancy was an incredibly kind and understanding woman. Since Shepard's death, Liara had maintained contact with her. At times, she had been the asari's only port in the storm that had become her life.

"What Shepard is going through is enough to break even the most stable of individuals," the Illusive Man continued. "She will work with us because we offer the best chance she has at getting Mrs. Salgado back, but I needn't tell you how she feels about our organization. What do you think she'll do when she finds out that it was _you_ that gave her to us? She may lie to herself at first, say it doesn't matter, but it will. Over time she will come to resent you, and finally…to hate you."

Liara shook her head, struggling against the tears that wanted to overwhelm her. "No," she whispered. "No, she won't, she-"

She sounded unconvincing, even to herself.

"Liara, you are a good woman, and you have done the galaxy an enormous service. I'm sorry, I truly am…but you _know_ I am right. It's best for both of you if you let her just move on, to do what she needs to do…and in the long run, it'll be gentler on _you_ as well. You're still young, intelligent. There will be others, doctor. In time this will all be easier, and you'll know you made the right decision."

Rising abruptly, Liara switched off the call, then turned her back onto the now silent vid screen. The tears overtook her, one hand covering her mouth as if to prevent the inevitable sobs from breaking free.

Sinking down to her knees, she made only a half-conscious, cursory attempt to halt her downward descent by gripping the arm of the chair. Bowing forward toward the floor, covering her face as if praying, the heart-broken asari could do nothing but cry.

In the background, Flatwood mournfully lamented loves lost.

* * *

><p>Sitting back as Liara's image disappeared from his screen, the Illusive Man took a final draw on his cigarette, then stubbed it out. Touching another connect command on his small console, he spoke. "Is she ready yet?"<p>

_{She is on her way up now,}_ Miranda's voice answered.

Turning his chair to face the pad, he opened the connection from his end, then took a sip of his brandy. A moment later, Shepard appeared as the holographic interface activated.

"Shepard, I'm very sorry about Mrs. Salgado," he said as her image strengthened.

"Don't be," she glared. "I'm going to find her."

"I hope that you do," he told her honestly. "I take it you've decided to accept our help?"

"Let me make a few things absolutely straight," she barked. "Firstly, I do things _my_ way. I'm not your lap dog or your lackey, dong ma? I'm not wearing _anything _that has the Cerberus designation on it and I'm not drinking any goddamn kool-aid. You are a _resource_…unfortunately the only one I can utilize if I even want to _hope_ to get those colonists back."

"Understood," he replied with a nod.

"I'm going to need a team. Tali said that she'll come and help as soon as she gets some things squared away with the Flotilla."

"Tali would be a good asset," he agreed. "We'll make any arrangements you like. As for the rest of your team, we've been working diligently the last six months to find the top soldiers, mercs, techs and scientists in the galaxy. Dossiers have been assembled on the cream of the crop, narrowed down not only to the best but to the ones that might be willing to help us. It'll be up to you to choose your final cut and convince them to sign up. I want you to have people you trust. I know how important that is."

"Do you?" she snorted. "Fine. Final cut is my call."

"There is one person I'm going to have to insist you bring with you," he warned. "Miranda Lawson will be your XO."

"Lawson," she glowered.

"She's an incredibly intelligent and talented woman, Shepard. She takes…a little getting used to, but then so do you. You will need her and her skills and she is a non-negotiable aspect of our arrangement."

Scowling, Shepard folded her arms, then nodded. "Fine. Done. But I get something in exchange."

"What's that?"

"I want anything and everything you have on Liara. Last known location, everywhere she's been since the _Normandy_'s gone down…everything you have."

"I can do that," he told her. "However, Shepard…I don't hold out much hope that even you will be able to locate her. The Shadow Broker hides his agents well. Even if you do find her, you have to ask yourself if she'll even want to see you."

"Of course she'll want to see me!"

"Are you sure? It has been two years…two years of you being dead, as far as she knows. That's a lot of grieving, a lot of healing, Shepard…for you to simply show up and rip the wound open again. It is natural after loss to feel a sense of anger and abandonment…if she realizes you're alive her first thought may be that you faked your death for some clandestine agenda, that you not only left her but that you did so on _purpose_. It will only hurt her the more, even if she does come to believe what really happened."

"Liara's smart. She'll believe me."

"Well, you know her better than I do," he admitted. "Still, I urge you to keep it in mind…and think about how all this will impact her. Some of our last intel on Liara suggest she has completely moved on, Shepard. You may be disrupting more than one life."

"I…what do you mean, _completely_ moved on?"

"I could be mistaken but there are indications that she was involved with a drell, a man named Feron. But again, our intel where Liara is concerned is sketchy at best. It could be mistaken."

Shepard said nothing, but he could tell from the set to her jaw that had really hit home. Sitting back he waved a hand a little.

"But, agreed. I will forward you everything we have on Liara's movements and known whereabouts for the last two years. Miranda will have the dossiers ready and we shall have a ship prepared for your use tomorrow morning. Oh, and Shepard, I found you a pilot you might like…I hear he's one of the best."

* * *

><p>As the hologram faded, Shepard stepped back off the pad. She didn't like this. Not any of it. Horrible as it sounded with as many people as had been taken, if it weren't for Nancy Shepard would already be on her way back to the Alliance right now…<em>fuck<em> Cerberus.

_You can get through this. Just keep your head together, keep focused. Do what you need to, Shepard. Find her and get her back safe._

"Hey, Commander?" A tentative voice suddenly spoke up behind her. A familiar voice. "Uh…long time no see."

Turning, Shepard calmly looked at Joker a moment…and then promptly punched him in the face.


	6. Chapter 6

When the door in front of her slid open, Shepard's eyes refocused from their faraway thoughts. Looking up she saw her gaze was not met, and got to her feet.

Joker had two beautiful black eyes. His broken nose had been treated and was not as swollen as it could have been, but it would take a few hours before it looked normal. The bruises themselves would take days to fade away.

Some might have been concerned about hurting the man. His Vrolik syndrome caused his bones to be brittle, especially in his limbs, leading to his need for leg braces and his inability to move quickly. Being his commanding officer, however…and a woman with _some_ degree of common sense…Shepard knew that his skull, spine, and pelvis were of normal bone density…only his ribs and limbs were hollow and easily broken. Had it been otherwise, Joker never would have made it into the Alliance Military in _any_ capacity. You didn't train a marine or even park someone in a pilot's seat if a hard pat on the back or a minor bump to the head risked killing them. Had Joker been _that_ fragile, he'd have been stamped out 4-F before even making it to boot.

"Look at me, pilot," Shepard ordered. Obediently, Joker's gaze lifted and met hers. Even if she didn't know the man as well as she did, she could have seen it in his eyes in that moment. Furious as she was at him she understood what he'd done in trying to save the _Normandy_. She knew that, for the last two years, the man had been forced to relive that moment again and again, watching her get blown out into space because of the choice he'd made. He'd lived with the burden of her ghost, knowing that his thoughtlessness had been what had gotten her killed. Any punishment he deserved he'd been living with ten-fold, his own conscience judge and executioner enough.

Nodding once, Shepard offered her hand. Blinking a little, Joker just stood there.

"Are we good, Mr. Moreau?" Shepard asked, not lowering her hand. Clearing his throat roughly, he nodded and then reached out, shaking her hand.

"Aye, ma'am. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry, Commander. I-"

"Your apology is accepted, Jeff," she told him. "And that is the last I want to hear on the subject. Now you can tell me what the fuck you're doing with Cerberus."

As they started down the hall he shook his head. "Last two years have been a nightmare, ma'am," he admitted. "When you and the _Normandy_ were…lost, the Council and the Alliance put on this big show. They blamed everything on the geth, declaring that the synthetics would be made to pay for the attack on the Citadel and for murdering you."

"The geth, not the Reapers?"

Joker snorted. "Anytime anyone even mentioned the word 'reapers' they all but laughed in their faces. Said there was no evidence, that it was just a story, misinformation. _Normandy'_s surviving crewmen were grilled and debriefed until they couldn't see straight, myself included. They just wanted everything _gone_. I got my ass grounded. I'm a pilot, Commander. Haven't got any family, my friends were scattered to the four winds, and they took away the one thing in my life that mattered to me. So, I started hunting around, trying to find any gig that would let me fly, you know? Then out of nowhere, a month later, I get Cigarette Man on my phone offering me a job, letting me fly again. Fuck yeah I signed up."

"The Illusive Man contacted you personally?"

"Yeah. Said he wanted to sign me on. Wasn't until a few months later he finally told me the real reason why…_you_. Said it would be a way to atone and…you know, deep heavy shit like that."

"You trust him? These people?" she asked with a scowl. He shook his head a little.

"Most are good people," he admitted. "They're just trying to make a difference. As far as Mr. Illusive well hell, I don't trust anyone that makes more than I do. Besides, he just seems kind of…off you know? A bit too smart for his own good. But, they're not all bad. Saved you. Let me fly."

"And won't tell me where Liara is," Shepard huffed. He looked at her and she shook her head. "You haven't heard from her, have you?"

"Not since…well, you know. Honestly, Commander…I wasn't strong enough to face her after what happened. When she saw me get out of that pod without you…I never thought I'd see hate on her face for anyone. Didn't think she was capable of feeling it at all, but it was there. I'll never get over seeing that look in her eyes. I felt like I'd killed her right along with you."

Shepard let out a faint humming sigh, then shook her head. "They won't tell me where she is. They keep saying they don't know but, I smell shit every damned time they do. They said something about her working with the Shadow Broker but I don't know if I buy that either."

"I don't know," he admitted, then gave a matter-of-fact nod. "But we'll find her, right?"

"Damn right we will," Shepard replied. "Illusive told me that he was going to have a ship ready for me soon. Not damn soon _enough_ if you ask me."

"Actually, it'll be ready first thing in the morning," Joker told her, eyes lighting up for the first time since she'd turned around in the holograph chamber. "They told me last night, Commander. You are going to flip your shit."

"Oh, am I?" she asked dryly. He grinned and gestured.

"I'm taking you to see her now."

They stepped through another pair of doors and into a docking berth. Mechanics rushing around in a flood of brilliant light did not distract her gaze from the moment it was fixed on the gleaming frigate clamped in front of her.

It was the _Normandy_…or rather, the _Normandy_'s bigger, sleeker, more athletic sister. Joker grinned at her expression, then winced a little, touching the side of his bruised nose lightly.

"They only just told me too."

Moving over to the huge observation windows, the dock not being dry but open to the vacuum of space, Shepard couldn't explain what she felt as she looked over the vessel. The _Normandy_, almost perfectly replicated save for a slight increase in size, a slightly more sleek line. It was painted, of course, with the Cerberus colors and logo, which she could more than have done without.

As she scrutinized the sweep of the hull, unconsciously looking for the slightest imperfection, she noticed that while the designation had been added to the side of the ship, no name was listed.

"Looks like they missed something," she murmured.

"No, Lawson told me they were going to let you decide on a name," Joker informed her. "I wanted _Fairy Dust_ or _Rainbow Unicorn_ but you can imagine how well that went down."

She barely heard his joke, her eyes unfocusing.

_The Salgado. The Alenko. The Liara. The Tianlán._

"The _Normandy_," she murmured, voice faintly rough as she turned away. "Of course."

Joker nodded his understanding as he watched her go.

"Of course, Commander."

* * *

><p>"A boy, raised by a human woman."<p>

The krogan was huge, and old. His scales were weathered and pale, his eyes foggy with growing cataracts, sagging jowls speaking of more centuries than he probably cared to tell about. Yet his every gesture still spoke of _predator_ and _warrior_, of deadly strength and intrinsic cunning. It was not common for a krogan to grow old. He had clearly earned the honor. It was etched indelibly all over his plates in scars and cracks both old and new.

Before him, even the towering Thug looked small, though the young krogan regarded the older warrior without fear.

"He is as krogan as any other," Gellian barked. She and Eír stood beside the pair, the former scowling sternly, the latter simply watching in curious fascination.

"A foundling," the old krogan clan-leader snorted with amusement. "Impossible. The breeding camps are well-guarded. For a child so young as you claim he was, to have been found away from Tuchanka is unheard of."

"Well, you are hearing of it," Gellian retorted. "Perhaps a fertile female from one of the other clans wanted freedom. Perhaps she was kidnapped. Perhaps the _child_ was, for some random reason. I don't know. All I know is the boy was found nearly dead on a ship I salvaged near the Traverse. He was barely walking age. I took him in."

His foggy eyes fixed to her. Though she didn't doubt that he could barely see her with those cataracts, his sense of smell and hearing were so acute as to make no difference. She wondered if he could smell the lie on her. Thug had, of course, not been salvaged or abandoned as an infant on some derelict. Thug was her own creation, forged of her own two hands. But to let the other krogan know that was to invite a large amount of unpleasantness and would hardly get her what she wanted.

"Then why did you not bring him back to Tuchanka? Why did you raise him as if he were your own?" the old man demanded. "The boy is completely stunted now, soft! He does not know what it means to be krogan!"

"You don't know that," Gellian snarled. "Thug is strong. Stronger than any warrior in your clan."

He barked a rough laugh, the sound like a bucket full of gravel being shaken madly. The sound was echoed by the dozen full warriors standing around them.

"I say let the boy fight in the trial," One of them smirked with a wave of his hand. "He is worthless anyway. Let him try. His death would be some amusement."

"Even if I wanted to, it is impossible," the old leader grumped. Beside him, another nearly as old nodded his wrinkled head.

"It is true," the Shaman of Clan Dundrin agreed. "He has no one to stand with him. He has no krant."

"I will stand with him," Eír offered. Eyes turned to her, and the clan leader snorted.

"Hmm. Asari…that might be acceptable. Who are you, girl? His mate?"

"I am his sister," she replied indignantly. The leader barked a laugh and looked at Gellian.

"You have quite a collection of 'children', human," he grumped. "Shaman…a single asari to stand with him as krant. What say you?"

The wrinkled Shaman grunted. "Asari are strong, though I do not hold much hope for the boy with only one girl at his side. Hmm. I say yes."

The leader cracked his neck sharply, before stepping forward and looking in Thug's eyes. "Well, boy? We are clan Dundrin. We are small but we are strong. We endure and make each other stronger. I am Battlemaster Dundrin Frek. My line of warriors, of leaders, stretches back to the time the krogan found their feet and crawled from the swamps. We do not have the keystone or the elaborate ritual of some clans for our trial. Our ways of strength are simple. You _survive_, and if you do, you are strong enough to be Dundrin."

"I am ready," Thug stated.

"Oh, I doubt that," Frek snorted, then pointed. "There is a pit. You and your krant enter it, and then these fine men around you will as well, five at a time. If you emerge from the pit again you will be one of us."

Gellian nodded slightly as Eír met her eyes. The krogan males were heading toward the pit, Thug moving along with them without hesitation. Without a word but with much understanding, the asari girl turned and followed, trotting a little to catch up to her brother's side.

"Do you think they'll come through this, Jelly?" Not-Shepard asked as she folded her cadaverous arms, watching the group move toward the pit. "I know you made them strong…stronger than they've a right to be, but those krogan warriors were honed by nature for millions of years."

"Nature," the older woman snorted. "Nature is nothing but chaos and disorder, dependant on random mutation and chance. _Nature_ couldn't replicate Eír _or_ Thug if it had a billion years to try. I have no doubt they'll wipe the ground with these so-called 'warriors'."

"You're probably right," Not-Shepard agreed, then smirked. "So how come you're so afraid then, Jelly? Bit attached to the Fake 'n Bakes, are we?"

"Don't call them that!" Gellian snarled under her breath. "_You_ are the one that should be afraid. Eír and Thug will be the last sight you see, and when they're done all the credits in the _galaxy_ won't be enough to bring you back."

Not-Shepard grinned, a boney rictus that stretched impossibly far, showed far too many teeth. "Promises, promises."

* * *

><p>The OSD from Nan's house tapped lightly on the edge of the small table in the temporary room Shepard had been assigned on the platform station, keeping time to some beat that only existed in her head. In front of her was a stack of thin data pads; the dossiers the Illusive Man had promised her. She'd been scanning through them, determined to stay focused, but her own thoughts would not be denied long. Her dark brown eyes were brooding as they focused on nothing, turned inward toward a turbulent storm.<p>

Nancy was gone, vanished…prey to these enigmatic Collectors who had gathered her and the rest of the colony up like children picking up their toys to return home.

Nan had never had cause to be nice to Shepard. She was just another street kid, just another sorry member of a sorry street gang, barely one step above an animal. Nancy saw kids like her twenty times a day, the refuse of an enlightened society that preferred to shut their problems away behind shiny white walls and sterile chrome window frames and pretend they didn't exist.

When Shepard had met her, she didn't know what kindness was. Such simple concepts as being touched, being hugged, were completely foreign. Nancy could have just pushed her through the system, remanded her to be institutionalized for the rest of her life, or churned back out onto the street to eventually die alone and unmourned in the gutter….but she hadn't. She'd looked past the feral glares, the grime and desperation, and seen something worth salvaging. Shepard owed her everything and now she was out there, somewhere…alive, or dead, or being tortured in horrible ways for whatever inexplicable reason those damn bugs could come up with.

Shepard's fist slammed into the table and she rose, pacing tensely around the small room, ignoring the burn of her still weak, over-used muscles.

She wanted a smoke. She had no cigars, not so much as a god-awful pussy little cigarette. No smokes, no whiskey, no guitar.

She wiped a hand over her eyes, staring at the little bed as if expecting something to appear there.

No guitar. It was gone, probably no more than cinder and ash on some planet somewhere. Her hat was gone, her wolverine tail. Her drawing…

Her eyes glossed and her fist clenched, trembling. Her drawing. _Paul's_ drawing. The only thing she had left of him. _Gone_.

Whipping around she slapped her hand over the stack of dossiers, scattering the pads around the table and sending several to the floor.

_Liara, where are you? Where _are_ you? I can't do this by myself…_

Sagging into a sit against one wall she folded her arms over her knees, head down as she closed her eyes.

Liara was out there, somewhere. She wanted…no, _needed_…to find her, if for no other reason than to say she was sorry, to make sure she was ok. The Illusive Man was right. Shepard couldn't just expect to come back after two years gone, to rip open the wound like that again. She had no right to do that.

_If the situation were reversed, if you thought she was dead and suddenly you found out she wasn't, that she'd been brought back…would _you _want to know?_

_Fuck_ yes.

Liara was going to hear about it anyway. If she really was working for the Shadow Broker…well, information was his game, wasn't it? If someone, somewhere, knew something…the Broker knew it too. No matter how classified Cerberus might think it was, a project of the cost and magnitude needed to bring her back…the Broker _had_ to know about it, or would soon enough. Rumors would spread. The Alliance had their own intelligence forces, the Citadel the STG units. Somehow the news would eventually get around and Liara _would _find out. Shepard couldn't stay secret from everyone for the rest of her life.

So what was better? Liara finding out she was alive from her own mouth, or hearing it through the grape-vine?

_Unless you can find her, that's_ exactly _how she's going to find out._

And what then? Would Liara put herself at risk to find _Shepard_, to find out if the rumors were true? And what about this Feron? Was he real?

She felt her jaw clench, her throat tighten. _Yes, Shepard…what_ about _this Feron? What if Liara has found love with someone else? Someone less…crazy, less hot-headed. Someone who's not going to run off into a thresher maw's mouth every fifteen minutes because duty commands him to? What then?_

Shepard knew the answer, as much as it made her feel sick. If Liara had found someone else, Shepard had no right to interfere in that, to come back out of the blue and just tear that apart. If Liara had found someone else, then Shepard would accept that, fade into the background, as it should be. Just so long as Liara was happy…that's all she wanted, Liara safe and _happy_.

_You never deserved her anyway, and you know it_.

Her watery gaze fell on the scattered dossiers. Rubbing the heel of her hand over her eyes she slowly got to her feet and gathered them up, before sitting down again and perusing the first one. She had to concentrate, get this done. Nancy was relying on her, and she wasn't going to let her down.

* * *

><p>It was perhaps the strangest ship's christening ever. Alliance Naval tradition dictated that smaller, faster ships like frigates were christened by a toast from the senior officers of the crew, in full dress uniform, while the ship itself was launched. The captain of the new vessel was then ferried in via shuttle and boarded through the front airlock…thus the first foot they set on the new deck was always at the helm.<p>

Cerberus was, clearly, not Alliance but they did hold to one aspect of the tradition. Shepard stood aboard the small shuttle and watched as it maneuvered in to lock at the helm. There had been no toast, unless you counted the six beers that Shepard had downed alone the night before while reading over dossiers…the only booze she could rustle up.

_Billions of credits…you'd think Cerberus would have something better to drink than mule-piss beer._

As for dress uniform, Shepard was as far from it as a person could get. She hadn't been joking when she'd told Miranda and the Illusive Man that she had no intention of wearing the insignia or drinking the kool-aid. As far as she was concerned, Cerberus were terrorists, and nothing but a tool for her to use and toss away as soon as the job was done. Miranda had come through and delivered quite a lot of clothing that didn't bear any mark of the organization. Most was even Shepard's taste, but insignia or not, she couldn't bring herself to put on any uniform that wasn't Alliance.

As a result, she set her first foot upon her new command wearing jeans, a dark blue t-shirt, a new pair of steel-toed boots that needed some serious breaking in, and Nan's gold cross on its chain around her neck.

Joker didn't even bat an eyelash as he caught sight of her, flanked by Miranda and Jacob who had both gone with the traditional dress uniforms. He merely tossed her a solemn salute, then turned back to his post as she continued onward.

It was the _Normandy_…and yet it was not. Everything was brighter, newer. The faces that turned to regard her, snapping salutes…all were unfamiliar. The CIC was bigger, an elevator bank in place of the partition where the comm room had been.

Even so, she half expected to see Pressley or Ash come striding over, one mindless report or another in their hand for her to sign.

_But Pressley's dead, isn't he? And Ash is fuck only knows where. Probably got her own command by now, if the Alliance was smart._

"Welcome aboard the new _Normandy_, Commander," Jacob said as she regarded the CIC.

"There are improvements in design but we built her as close to the original as was feasible," Miranda informed her. "We wanted her to feel like home."

"Should have built her into a bar, then," Shepard stated without mirth.

"There is a small bar on the lower decks," Miranda told her. "In one of the observation rooms. As well there is a full kitchen in the mess and a small gym just off the Crow's Nest. Amenities I believe the original was lacking."

Shepard eyed her. "Crow's Nest?"

"Your quarters, Commander," Jacob told her. "Top level. Crew calls it the Crow's Nest."

"Your things have already been taken up there," Miranda stated, then motioned to one of the crew standing nearby. As the woman started forward with a nod and a smile, the Australian introduced her. "This is Kelly Chambers. She'll be your Yeoman."

"A pleasure to meet you, ma'am," the Yeoman said as she saluted. She had to be of an age with Shepard but life had been slightly kinder…or she'd been slightly kinder to _herself_…and she looked less worn. "I look forward to working with you."

"She'll keep track of your messages and duty ros-"

"I know what a Yeoman does, Lawson," Shepard said with disinterest. "No offense, Ms. Chambers. You drink?"

"On occasion, ma'am," she replied honestly.

"Good, then we'll get along like aces." Looking over at Lawson she said, "Now, is there anyone else I need to meet right this instant, or can we actually get moving?"

"I don't see any reason why we can't at least put in a heading," Miranda replied. "You made your choices from the dossiers?"

"A couple. Seems like a lot of them call Omega home so we're heading there first. Kill as many birds with one fucking rock as we can. That salarian scientist was there…what's his name? Solus?"

"Mordin Solus," Miranda agreed. "Top of his field. A good place to start."

"Dr. Solus is an excellent choice," a woman's voice floated out of nowhere. "He should take little convincing to recruit, and is the best option for defeating or creating protections against the Collector's technology."

Turning her head, Shepard squinted at a blue orb that hovered above one of the CIC consoles. Seeing Shepard's expression, Jacob intervened. "Commander, this is EDI…the ship's Enhanced Defense Intelligence."

"Pleased to meet you, Commander," the orb flashed as the voice spoke.

When Shepard said nothing, Miranda glanced at Jacob, then filled the awkward silence. "EDI is the ship's AI. She controls electronic and cyber warfare but cannot otherwise interface with ship's systems. Cerberus keeps our AI's tightly leashed."

At the word 'leashed', Shepard's glare turned on her XO, before she straightened. "You'd think Cerberus would have familiarized itself with human history, if not that of other species," she murmured. "The tighter you leash your subjects, the harder they revolt. Or need I remind you about the geth."

When Miranda just looked at her, Shepard turned her attention back to the orb. "How's Joker taking you so far?"

"Mr. Moreau seems to be…slightly put-out by my presence."

Shepard smiled, faint though it was. "Good," she said. "I think you and I will get along just fine then."

* * *

><p>The Crow's Nest, as Jacob had titled it, was nearly three times the size of her rooms on the original Normandy. A partition and a small set of stairs led down from an office loft to the bedroom proper. The entire port wall was taken up by an enormous fish tank in which almost diaphanous white and silver piscine floated. Shepard moved over, peering at the lovely, delicate creatures before she abruptly recognized them. They were called white brides, a type of fish native to the more tropical seas of Thessia…expensive pets to say the least.<p>

"EDI, can you access in here?" she said abruptly as she watched the beautiful animals shift and move.

"I can access anywhere in the ship, Commander," the AI's voice answered immediately, the blue orb appearing to hover over the desk.

"What's all this about?" she asked, jerking her chin toward the tank.

"They are fish, Commander."

"Yeah, I know they are fish, thank you. Why are there fish in my room? It's impractical. Unless Cerberus thinks to dazzle me with luxuries-"

"The tank and the white brides were Ms. Lawson's idea," EDI answered calmly. "I believe she added them to the room at her own personal expense."

Now that surprised her. Turning away from them she stared at EDI. "_Lawson_? Why?"

"Ms. Lawson spent a great deal of time doing research on you, Shepard," EDI explained. "She familiarized herself with every aspect of your history, thought processes and personality. Such intense research was necessary for the project to return you exactly how you were. Ms. Lawson feared you would be…upset, given circumstances. She wished to include something that would help to comfort and center you. She knew of your affiliation with both the ocean and with Thessia and felt such a display would be soothing."

Shepard looked back at the tank, staring. "Well, fuck me," she murmured softly. Unconsciously her hand stole into her pocket, where the still unviewed OSD from Nan's house was sitting.

"That is also why the small gym was included," EDI told her. "Physical activity relieves stress, and it will aid to return you to your former condition."

"Yeah, hitting shit makes me happy," she said absently, her heart not truly in to the joke. "How long until we reach Omega?"

"Three hours, Shepard," EDI answered obediently.

"Right. Make sure no one bugs me until we're ready to dock, ok?"

"As you wish, Commander," the AI said obediently, and vanished. Shepard didn't delude herself into believing EDI was really gone. She had no doubt that every bolt of this ship was bugged or otherwise monitored.

_Fuck, they probably even have a camera in the john to count how many times I take a shit,_ she thought darkly.

Striding down into the bedroom area she unsnapped the small case that had been left on her bed, alongside the duffel containing her clothes. Pulling out the dossiers she sifted through them until she had selected three, and returned to her desk. Sitting down she switched on her console, then looked them over.

The first was for Mordin Solus, the salarian scientist nesting in some clinic in the lower reaches of the station. He'd worked for some time with the STG and headed up some highly ambitious projects, most of which had been redacted even off her copy of his records. Either the Illusive Man didn't want her to know what he'd been involved in…or he himself didn't know.

Personally, Shepard didn't have too much experience with salarians, save the Citadel Councilor who was _hardly_ her favorite person in the galaxy, and the STG group led by Kirrahe they'd assisted on Virmire. Kirrahe had been a bit of a racist prick, acting as if krogan were some kind of virus that needed to be eliminated. She hoped this Solus wasn't the same. She'd hate to have to kick his ass out an airlock.

Setting his dossier aside she picked up the next. This was some merc commander who called himself Archangel. She didn't know what it was with mercs that they had to give each other fancy or scary-sounding nicknames…like Fist, or Blades, or Slingshot. It made them sound like fucking morons who had nothing better to do than see how much further one could piss than the other.

According to the dossier, however, this fancy-ass Archangel was _not_ a two-bit thug. He was taking on some of the strongest crime lords on Omega…and winning. He had a strategic savvy that was just short of absolute brilliance and a grim determination that made him a serious contestant.

That was good. Pissing-contest nickname or not, Shepard needed some fucking muscle that could hit hard and not get his face blown off doing it.

The last dossier was on a human man named Zaeed Massani, a bounty hunter that Shepard had actually heard of. He had a bit of a reputation for mopping up messes and bringing in some rather tough marks. The Alliance had kept tabs on his activities and, though she of course had no proof, Shepard wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if they hadn't actually contracted Massani now and again for their own purposes. Alliance trained agents were all well and good, but contracted bounty hunters actually worth their salt stirred fewer ripples when a mark ran to an unfriendly location…like Omega.

If nothing else, Massani would have some serious underworld contacts that might be able to get them additional info on the Collector's movements.

_He might even have some ties to Shadow Broker agents_, she thought, leaning back in her chair a little. _Might be able to put me in contact with someone who knows how to find Liara._

Her eyes wandered toward the aquarium and the slow, graceful dance of the white brides, before she pursed her lips and drew the OSD from her pocket. Turning it over in her hands she regarded it.

_It could be nothing…probably is nothing_, she told herself. _Could be a copy of a vid letter Nan got from a friend or Colonial Affairs requisition forms for the colony._

Something told her, however, that it had to be something more. The OSD had been placed deliberately against the stand for her commendation…not somewhere you just tossed random records or forms. It had something to do with her…or it was something that Nan had wanted her to see.

_Nan thought you were _dead_, for fuck's sake! She'd hardly vid something she wanted a dead woman to see, as if she'd just show up and watch it._

It was probably just a copy of the award ceremony after the Citadel battle, or that little vid that she had mentioned the last time they'd talked to each other…the one of her and the crew saluting Matriarch Benezia's casket. Some tiny bit of nostalgia that Nan couldn't make herself part with.

_You're never going to find out what it is sitting here staring at it, Shepard. Grow some fucking balls and just put it in the player. Then at least you'll_ know, _dong ma?_

"Shi a," she murmured to herself, before she turned the OSD over and slid it into the console's drive.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: Sorry for the delay for this chapter. Haven't been feeling very well lately.

* * *

><p>As Shepard inserted the OSD into the slot, a list of dates and call codes appeared, glowing softly in the middle of the console display.<p>

She sat back a little. A phone log, spanning over ten years, with the latest call record listing exactly one year after the date the _Normandy_ was attacked. Not exactly what she'd expected. Curious, she reached forward and selected the first and oldest call on the list.

The screen darkened a moment, then brightened as an image took form. Shepard lifted her brows as she was confronted with her own face, much younger. A bustling city street was behind her, showing the call was made from a public terminal.

She could see only the video from one side of the call, but the audio from both sides had recorded. Hearing Nancy's voice again tightened her chest, even as she regarded a girl that had already gone through so much fire…and had no idea how much was still in store for her.

"Del, dear, there you are. I was getting worried!" Nancy's voice chirped. "Well? How did it go? Where's Paul?"

"He's getting an ice cream," her younger self answered, jerking her chin to one side as she looked at something off screen. "Don't worry, I can see him."

"I never worry when he's with you. So? Don't leave me in anticipation here. Tell!"

The younger Shepard rolled her shoulders a little, glancing off vid again a moment before seeming to look directly at her older counterpart. A thin, cocky grin appeared. "Well, I won't know for sure for a few days still. I have to get a fuck- uh…_stupid_ physical, but-"

"Oh! Del, that's wonderful news! Oh, I'm so proud of you darling! Are you going to be home soon?"

"Paul wants to take a victory lap around Central Park and see the monkeys. I promised him. Shouldn't take too long. We'll be back by dinner."

Before Nancy could respond a second face appeared, beaming a grin from ear to ear. A pair of hands held dripping ice cream cones as Paul flung his arms around the young Shepard's neck, making her laugh.

"Momma! Did you hear?" the boy gushed, the sight of his bright eyes and all but glowing expression immediately bringing heat to the back of older Shepard's eyes. She had no pictures or vids of Paul. The crayon drawing was the only thing she could stomach keeping. Nan had plenty of photos and had offered them to her more than once but she'd been unable to stomach the thought of looking at him like this…looking at him so sweet and happy and _alive_, and knowing he wasn't any more because of _her_.

"I heard! Be careful, you're going to get ice cream all over Del's shirt!"

"Del's gonna be a hero!" he blurted, ignoring his mother's gentle admonition, before planting a sloppy kiss on the younger Shepard's cheek, making her giggle again.

"All right, all right, let up chowder-head," the girl joked, relieving the boy of one of the cones as he loosened his grip on her. "We'll be back soon, Nan."

"Take care you two!" Nan cooed happily. Paul's face filled the screen dramatically, before he pursed his lips and planted a kiss on the vid camera. The older Shepard couldn't help a faint chuckle at that as the younger admonished the boy before hanging up.

"You can't do that, Paul, you don't know what icky shit is on that camera!"

"_Ooh_, you said shi-" Paul chortled, just as the call disconnected. A moment later, the image returned to the log menu screen.

Shepard well remembered that day. It was the same day she had finally gone to the Alliance recruitment station, and taken the first steps to joining up with the marines. She'd gone to her physical two days later, and within a week she'd gotten her acceptance letter and her orders to report to boot. Six months after that, she'd been doing push-ups in the mud as some fucking drill sergeant screamed in her ear and called her worthless, while Sperry and his boys ambushed Paul, demanding to know where she was…and then beating him when he couldn't tell them fast enough or adequately enough for their satisfaction.

Beat him so badly they'd had to identify his body by a DNA sample.

The list of other calls waited patiently, and after a long while, Shepard selected the next one, and then the next.

All, save the last, were calls between her and Nan. She watched as her younger self grew slowly and progressively older, more mature. Most were just conversations to catch up while she was on one ship or another.

One was particularly difficult…so much so that Shepard couldn't watch the entirety. It was a call from Shepard to Nan shortly after being released from debrief on Torfan. In this one an extremely exhausted, shaking Shepard had broken down with grief and fury, alternating between spitting epithets and sobbing about how she wasn't a murderer.

That Nan had kept the log of this call, one of the longest in the list, disquieted her a bit. Nan's soothing voice did little to help, and she switched the call off before getting through a third of it.

The problem was, Shepard had _felt_ like a murderer, no matter how adamantly she told Nancy and her commanding officers she wasn't. Not because of the men and women under her command that she'd sent in to their deaths. Not because of the defiant, arrogant batarian slavers whose skulls she'd aired out even when they were finally disarmed and on their knees in front of her.

No, it was because of that one boy…that single young batarian boy who had looked her in the eye and told her he was sorry for what he'd done.

A kid, a child, not yet a man…honestly regretful for actions he'd probably been forced into anyway. He hadn't begged, hadn't whimpered. He'd accepted his fate with more grace than his older counterparts, and the only message he had wanted to convey was his regret.

And Shepard had shot him anyway…blown him away with a fury, a blind rage so deep all it wanted to do was hurt, to make someone pay, even if that someone was just a helpless kid.

A helpless kid, like Paul.

_And _this_ is what they saved, what they think is a goddamn hero. An angry murderer who shot an unarmed boy on his knees. _

Passing over the remaining calls, she selected and clicked on the last. She had no doubt the calls in between were all her and Nan, but the last call made her curious. She'd been dead a year when it was made, yet Nan had thought it important enough to save to the same OSD.

The call loaded, and when the figure appeared on the screen, Shepard abruptly sat up.

It was Liara. The asari looked just as she remembered her…and yet different. There was a weary cast to her eyes, to her bearing…as if the colors of her being had been ever so slightly faded. The slightly darker blue rims of her eyes told she had recently been crying, and she looked tired.

"Nan, I hope I am not bothering you," she began, her sky blue eyes seeming to focus on Shepard though, of course, it was Nancy who she saw. As with the other calls, Nan's voice was clear in response though no image could be seen of her.

"Of course not! You are never any bother, darling…are you all right?"

"It has…been a rough day," Liara admitted.

"I know," Nancy murmured gently. "Everyone here has been so understanding…a bit _too_ understanding, actually. They keep offering well-wishes, acting like if they say the wrong thing I will break somehow."

"Yes," Liara said. "I keep trying to forget and yet…I cannot."

"Don't try and forget, sweetie," Nancy soothed. "Might as well try and empty the sea with a teaspoon for all the good it will do you. Just…try and remember with happiness. Honor who she was."

"And what was I, Nan?" Shepard murmured tiredly into her palm. She couldn't tear her eyes away from Liara's face. The pain was not the stark raw of a fresh wound but it was there, floating beneath the surface of the asari's blue eyes. Something had been subtracted from her, taken away, and knowing that it had been her doing felt like a knife in Shepard's gut. The last thing she'd ever wanted to do was to hurt Liara.

Liara nodded slightly in response to Nancy's advice, then lifted her gaze. "I got the package that you sent. It was very sweet of you, Nan. Shepard…would have loved it. Especially _Odes of Memory_…I could listen to only that song for hours on end."

"Well, Del always did have a crush on that man's voice. Charles Flatwood may as well have been a god as far as she was concerned. I'm glad you are enjoying it."

Liara inquired about the colony and things dissolved into polite chit-chat for a few minutes as Nan talked about her gardening, various gossip about the colony.

"Listen to me, going on like this," Nancy finally said. "How has your own work been going, dear? You don't look like you have been sleeping."

"I…am all right," Liara murmured, clearly no better of a liar than she had ever been. "Work is steady enough. I have been keeping myself busy. It is just with…this anniversary today and…and _Feron_. I just feel as if I am letting him down, just as I let Shepard down."

Shepard felt her stomach clench a little at the name, the same name the Illusive Man had mentioned.

_So, he was right. She_ has _found someone else_.

Reaching out she shut off the call, unable to bear any more of it. "You didn't let me down, Tianlán," she murmured to the dark screen. "_I_ let _you_ down. I'm so sorry, Li. I'm so sorry…"

* * *

><p>The biotic fire was like a storm that erupted from clear, static laden air. Licks of twisting blue shot out of the pit, riding on a burst of displaced air so strong the five krogan warriors were not only lifted from the ground, but thrown clear of the pit altogether.<p>

They were the fourth group to have entered. Two warriors lay dead. The rest were exhausted and unquestionably defeated.

Dundrin Buhto, son of Frek and a well-seasoned warrior in his own right, glowered at his father and then strode toward the pit, leaping down without hesitation.

"Just one this time?" Thug asked with amusement, rising from a crouch. Eír paced beside him, her hands wreathed in blue flame.

"I am Dundrin Buhto," the elder announced, regarding the two. "Son of Frek, grandson of Chuggo, who killed forty asari warriors on the Plain of Tsilos. I have trained the young warriors of Dundrin for four centuries."

"Then you have done a poor job," Thug snorted. "We have tossed every one of your so-called warriors like they were paper dolls."

"You are strong," Buhto admitted. "I have been watching you. Your biotics are powerful but I wonder…can you fight me without them?"

"I can _defeat_ you without them," Thug bragged.

"We shall see," Buhto told him. "We will fight. You and I and your krant. No biotics, no weapons."

Thug narrowed his green eyes a little, then glanced up to the edge of the pit where Gellian stood with the rest of the observers, watching them. Gellian gave the slightest nod, and Thug grinned and turned his attention back to his opponent.

"Done," he agreed, then lowered his head and charged.

The impact of his skull-plate against the rock wall of the pit rang like a loud clap of thunder through the cavern and Thug stumbled, dazed. Eír's eyes widened in surprise and alarm. "Thug!"

Furious, she glared at Buhto. "Coward! Why didn't you meet him fairly?"

"All I did was step to the side," Buhto told her. "He is strong but he is hot-headed. He needs to focus his energy on his enemy, not his blind superiority. Do you think every enemy will merely stand and wait to be hit? Only fools do this…and only fools expect them to."

Scowling, barely remembering not to use biotics, Eír rushed forward toward the male, fist cocking back and swinging. Again, Buhto stepped to the side but Eír was on to that ruse. Using her momentum she rolled and swung her leg, slamming the heel of her foot into the krogan's gut. Armored as he was, the male nevertheless grunted, stumbling back a step.

"Not bad, little girl," he half-coughed, half-laughed. "You are strong for an asari, even without biotics. Now, can you hit me again?"

He heard the faint whistle of air and turned, missing the fist that sailed past his face. Thug had recovered his wits and rejoined the fray. Bellowing, the young male slammed his head –plate into Buhto's, trying to stun the larger male. It was of surprising force, enough to make Buhto blink, but he had not trained hundreds nor lived as long as he had by being easily stunned.

The boy was definitely strong, however…remarkably so. Buhto had never seen another like him, not of his age.

_Strong physically, strong biotically, he has the makings of a great battlemaster_, Buhto thought, then smirked. _But _not_ the training. He relies too much on power, and has no idea how to properly wield it._

The boy, encouraged by making his opponent stagger, foolishly attempted the same move again. Buhto met him with a two fingered jab directly into the throat…one of the only vulnerable spots on a krogan's body. Immediately Thug gagged and gasped, falling to his knees as he clutched at his neck.

The asari was on Buhto the next moment, but that was expected. Just as strong, but just as young and inexperienced. He caught her as she tackled him and did nothing other than squeeze. The asari squirmed, gasping as her air was constricted. Struggling she tried to break free but the male had her in a secure grip, and only squeezed the harder.

She felt sharp pain as her ribs were compressed nearly to the breaking point. Only when she was on the verge of blacking out did Buhto release and drop her, leaving her to gasp beside her brother.

The older krogan gave a grunt of amusement, then looked up at the others. The human woman looked concerned but unsurprised.

_She expected me to defeat them_, he thought, before looking at his father.

"I will train them," he stated. Frek bobbed his grizzled old head.

"The boy and his krant are worthy of Dundrin," he stated. "And worthy of Buhto's training. Boy, get to your feet."

Thug struggled to rise, grimacing. He glared at Buhto, then turned to face Frek, standing as tall as he was able.

"You are now Dundrin Thug," Frek stated. "Be proud. Misguided and foolish as most of Tuchanka has become, _we_ remember our strength, our truth, and _our_ name still means something. Be worthy of it, or I'll take your head off myself."

* * *

><p>"Commander Shepard, we are an hour out from Omega," EDI's voice stirred the thick silence in the Crow's Nest, barely drawing a blink from the woman who sat at the desk, head propped in her hand as she stared at nothing. "The doctor would like to see you down in the infirmary."<p>

Silence. The blue orb seemed to pulse expectantly for a moment, then tentatively repeated her name. "Commander Shepard?"

Sitting back, she let her hand drop to her side. "Yeah, all right," she murmured. "I suppose I should see the rest of the ship anyway."

"Are you all right, Commander?"

"Are you programmed to be concerned for my welfare?"

"I am programmed to assist in any capacity in which I am needed aboard the ship," EDI responded. "I am also programmed with a rudimentary personality which leaves room for growth and individual development. My concern for your welfare stems from both directives."

Shepard waved her hand a little as she got to her feet, a dismissive, disinterested gesture. "Concern yourself with more important things," she grumped. "I'll go down and see the sawbones."

Stepping into the lift Shepard straightened and arched a little as the doors closed, her back cracking loudly. She gathered up her hair, the locks still much longer than she was used too, and pulled them back, tying them in a loose knot again. She probably should just get it cut. While Alliance dress-codes did allow women to have longer hair, they were also required to keep it pulled back when on duty. Long hair was a liability in combat, not only getting in the way but also creating a point of grip for an enemy. Since she was seventeen, Shepard had kept her hair cut no longer than her collar.

_I may no longer be Alliance, but I'm still a soldier, goddamnit. They can't take_ _that away from me at least._

Emerging onto the crew deck, Shepard was once again struck with the similarity to the original _Normandy. _Looking out over the mess she saw several crew men glancing curiously at her, a man in the small kitchen peering up through drifts of steam from his cooking. Ignoring them, she turned toward what would have been the infirmary on the original ship…and therefore was doubtlessly the infirmary on this one.

Stepping in the door proved her right. The infirmary was surprisingly bright, cheerful and shining with white and polished metal. As she stepped in, the form sitting at a nearby work-station turned and looked at her, then rose to her feet.

Shepard stared. The woman smiled a little, then folded her arms. "I told you I was going to start thinking you had a crush on me, if you kept walking into my infirmary," Dr. Helen Chakwas teased. Shepard shook her head with a snort.

"And I told _you_, you're way out of my league," Shepard replied. "Qing wa kao de liu mang!"

Chakwas blinked, then laughed. "I'm pretty sure the only word I understood there was 'frog'…and I'm not _entirely_ sure how I even understood _that_ much. It's good to see you again, Shepard."

"It's good to see you too," Shepard told her. "I can hardly believe you're here! You left the Alliance for _Cerberus_? Why?"

"Well, long story short…I left for you, Shepard."

"I…_think_ I'm going to need the longer version," Shepard replied, confused.

Chakwas gestured to a nearby chair, then sat back down in her own. As Shepard sat Chakwas shook her head sadly. "Oh, it was such a mess after you'd gone," she said. "I'm sure Jeff has told you some. The whole crew was grilled, interrogated endlessly and finally scattered to the winds. I was remanded to some small little clinic on the edges of nowhere…performing vaccinations I think was the most grandiose aspect of the job. Then a year ago Joker contacts me, out of nowhere. Tells me that the Illusive Man approached him for a job at Cerberus and said that he was going to try and get them to approach me as well. Well, I was startled and confused, to say the least, but he wouldn't say anything more, just that it was something I had to do, that it would be worth it."

She shook her head and smirked a little. "Poor Jeff. For weeks I thought he'd gone completely off his rocker. No word for a year from the man, then suddenly that call, and then he vanishes again. Then to my surprise, I'm contacted by Miranda Lawson and was encouraged into a meeting. That's when they told me about you."

"Joker didn't contact Anderson? Hackett?"

"To do so would have undoubtedly put them in a very tough spot, if not in outright danger. Not to mention _yourself_. If the Alliance had discovered that Cerberus was in possession of your remains and were working to restore you from death itself…well. Joker took a risk even contacting _me_. I don't like Cerberus, Shepard. I don't think I'll ever really consider myself one of them, but that's not why I am here. I'm here for the same reason you have chosen to stay. Because _this_ is the only way afforded to us right now. If I know you as well as I think I do, then I know that Cerberus will be out of the picture as soon as they outlive their usefulness. I also know that you'll be throwing yourself into so many fires that I'll have my hands full stitching your hide back together again. Much more interesting than vaccinations, I think."

Shepard gave a tired version of her lopsided smirk, nodding before she ran a hand over her face. "You don't happen to know-"

"-where Liara is? No, I'm sorry…I haven't seen her since the memorial service on Torfan."

Shepard sat back with a scowl. "The what? They held my memorial on…why on _Torfan_?"

"The colony there petitioned the most strongly, I suppose," Chakwas told her. "They never forgot what you did for them, and from what I understand, it's become a much needed boost to their tourist trade. Your memorial is quite the popular wedding location."

Shepard groaned. "Unreal. _Fucking_ unreal," she murmured.

_{Commander, we're about twenty minutes away from Omega dock,}_ Joker's voice broke in.

"Thank you," she barked back. "I'll be up in the CIC in a minute."

"Have you talked to Jeff?" Chakwas asked gently. "It's understandable that you be angry with him but he has been beating himself up over it for two years now. I hope you weren't too hard on him."

Shepard rolled her shoulders. "I broke his nose," she admitted, then shook her head. "He's punishing himself far worse than I ever could. And if nothing else, I know for a goddamn fact he'll never pull something like that again. I don't care who commissioned this ship, if I didn't trust him he wouldn't be at the helm."

Chakwas smiled slightly, searching Shepard's face a moment. Shepard didn't blame her. If a friend of hers had died and then been rebuilt, she probably would have stared a little too. Then the older woman leaned forward, reaching out and laying her hand over Shepard's.

"It is _good_ to have you back," she said. "With you around, I know things will somehow turn out all right."

Shepard bobbed her head. "Even if I have to set them on fire to do so, right?" she teased. "I hope that's true, doctor. Because right now, things feel…_very_ far from all right."

* * *

><p>Setting foot onto Omega was like returning to the old neighborhood back in New York…if it had been closed in and sunk a hundred feet underground first. The station, built into the remains of an enormous asteroid, somehow gave the impression of being subterranean even though grimy windows showed distant structures and the starry expanse of open space.<p>

Shepard had never before been to Omega but she _knew_ the place. Its heartbeat, its soul, was as familiar to her as her own. She slipped into the atmosphere like pulling on a well-worn coat, noticeably more at ease than both Jacob and Miranda.

Jacob couldn't help the faint grimace as he looked around the wide plaza just off the docking bay. Shepard had pegged him early and correctly as a boy scout, and his expression only proved it the more. He liked things clean and ordered, liked men who knew what manners were and women who still had a desire for chivalry. Honest, open, upfront to a fault, he couldn't help but be uncomfortable in a place where honesty was taboo…where the native tongue was deception and _everything_ came with a price.

Miranda's behavior was more that of a scientist studying a new virus…aloof, fascinated for educational purposes but thinking only in terms of danger, containment, and eradication before the lower life forms she scrutinized escaped to spread their plague.

"All right. Dr. Solus should be a few streets over, in the lower slums. He has a clinic there," Miranda began, then blinked as a very large, gruff looking batarian seemed to zero in on them.

"Hey, you…Shepard," he grumped, not bothering to even glance at Jacob or Miranda, all four of his eyes fixed only on Del.

"Hey, you…asshole," Shepard replied casually. She was surprised both that the batarian had approached and that he knew who she was. One usually didn't expect to see marines who'd been dead for two years come striding onto a space station. She wasn't about to _show_ her surprise, however. Shepard had danced around back-street politics for most of her life. She knew its steps well, and one of the first rules was that you never gave _anything_ away, never showed surprise, fear, or intimidation.

Poker face, always.

"Aria T'Loak wants to see you," the batarian replied sternly, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, indicating a very large club on the other side of the plaza. Neon flashed and even from here, Shepard could feel the booming bass of hard sensory music, like the distant pulse of some aggravated predator. "Now."

"_Everyone_ wants to see me," Shepard said with a casual, shit-eating grin. "I'm a popular gal. I'll try and fit her in."

"You want to keep your spleen, you'll see her _now_," he growled back. Without waiting for a response he turned and strode away.

"It's not good that Aria T'Loak knows who you are and that you're here," Miranda said. "She could make this extremely risky for us."

"Let me guess, she's the biggest wig in this place," Shepard grunted. "Don't worry. I got this. Give me five minutes with the bitch."

"Meeting with Aria will be very dangerous," Jacob warned. "She's a criminal, a thug…she makes the mafia crime-lords back home look like school kids."

"No sweat. You two just keep your mouths shut and follow my lead, ok?"

Shepard strode off across the plaza toward the indicated club, leaving the pair with little choice but to follow her or lose her altogether.

The club was apparently quite popular, an elcor bouncer keeping a line of hopefuls in check…a line that stretched a good block. Despite the fact that Shepard was in armor with a pair of machine pistols strapped to her hips and a serious Miitgard rifle slung over her shoulder, the elcor didn't so much as cast her or the other two a glance. Neither did the two well armed turians flanking the actual doorway. Shepard strode right up the stairs and past them as if she owned the place.

Just inside, a long anteroom lead into the club proper. Vid screens lined the walls, alternating between showing images of flame and fairly graphic scenes of both sex and violence. The music was almost a physical push now, a pounding drive of sound that only accentuated and highlighted the vids.

Benches and cushioned couches lined the anteroom, allowing patrons a slight escape from the heat of the dance floor without actually leaving the club itself. Shepard strode past writhing forms of couples, most drunk or high, doing everything short of stripping naked right out in the open.

An archway divided anteroom from the main club and as she stepped inside she looked upward. Dancers, most asari and most wearing what could only barely be termed clothing were writhing around on a circular stage a dozen feet above the dance floor. Huge vid screens showed the same scenes as in the anteroom, interspersed with close-ups of the dancers themselves. On the floor, the mass of patrons was so tightly packed it was almost impossible to tell where one person stopped and another began.

A set of stairs led up to a second floor, to an enclosed sort of viewer's box. Even without the armed guards standing at the base of the stairs Shepard would have known that T'Loak was up there.

Edging around the worst of the crowd, Shepard once again didn't pause in her stride as she went right past the guards and up the stairway. As she'd known would happen, they didn't so much as twitch.

Every world had its culture, even the underworld. Once you understood its customs you could navigate, and one dictate of the underworld was this; if the big boss sent for someone, you did not get in that someone's way…not if you were just an expendable grunt set to guard a fucking set of stairs.

An open door waited at the top of the steps, and she passed through it into an elegantly appointed room. The moment Miranda and Jacob were clear as well, the door slid shut, sealing out almost all the thunderous sound and replacing it with silence.

Half a dozen men, batarian and turian, stood scattered about the room…all armored, all carrying, and all looking about as rough as a bad night on the strip. A large set of windows flanked a curved velvet sofa large enough to seat a dozen, and on platforms at either end two dancing girls moved and gyrated to the now barely audible music…nothing more than living furniture, artwork in their own right.

The only form seated on this sofa was an asari woman. Her clothes were fashionable and tasteful, the expression on her face not only one of scrutiny but of cool indifference.

"Stay here," Shepard murmured to her companions, then strode forward.

"That's enough," the asari said quietly, but as if she had barked an order Shepard's way was suddenly blocked by two of the armored men.

"Don't move," one snarled, and activated some kind of scan. Shepard arched a brow but said nothing. Clearly, they were not looking for weapons as hers couldn't be more blatant. The only weapon even remotely hidden was the knife in her boot.

"She checks," the scanner said after a moment, powering off his device and stepping away. Shepard made no move to go forward.

"How interesting," the asari murmured, a faint smirk appearing. "You are exactly what I expected, Shepard…and yet completely _un_expected."

"I take it you weren't sure if I was really me," Shepard said, jerking her chin at the thug with the scan.

"A little insurance is never amiss, Commander," Aria replied. "Please, come and have a seat. I'd like to talk a bit."

Moving forward, Shepard sat down, close enough to talk but not within reaching distance of the woman. Aria sat up a little, measuring the human woman before snapping her fingers. Out of nowhere an asari girl appeared, moving up with a tray in hand.

"Have a drink," Aria offered as the girl half bowed, presenting the tray to Shepard. On it were several glasses, each filled with a liquid. Without hesitation Shepard reached for the middle glass, one containing a faintly luminescent green-yellow fluid. As she took it, Aria lifted a brow.

"Are you sure you want that one?" she asked. "It is quite strong."

"To your health," Shepard replied, lifting the small cup in salute a moment before downing its contents. When the human didn't sputter or choke, Aria finally shed her cloak of disinterest, actually smiling.

"Bravo," she lauded. "It's a rare human that can hold their pris para. Then, it is a rare human that can return from the dead, as well."

"I must be a rare human then," Shepard told her, setting the glass down. The servant scurried away at a flap of Aria's hand.

"And an intriguing one. Tell me, Shepard. What can I do for you?"

Shepard wasn't fooled. The offer was so casually made but Omega was like another other slum. Favors were never given. Payment was always expected, in one form or another, sooner or later.

"I am looking for a few warm bodies," she said.

"Warm bodies we have plenty of…and cold ones," Aria hedged. "These bodies have particular names?"

"Let's start simply," Shepard told her. "Archangel."

"You want him dead too?" Aria asked, eyes drifting to watch the dancers, one finger trailing over her lips.

"Maybe," Shepard shrugged. "I hear he's been stirring up trouble, kicking the puppies of poor little boys and girls around Omega."

Aria chuckled, then gestured at the dancer. "Isn't she lovely? Her name is Vira. Only ninety years old. I hired her six months ago and so far she's worked out beautifully. She's like a sculpture brought to life, isn't she?"

Obediently Shepard glanced at the girl. "Very graceful," she admitted, before looking back at Aria silently. This was all still part of the dance, part of feeling each other out. Aria was trying to decide if Shepard was an asset or an enemy. There were only three kinds of people in Aria's world, after all…people who could be of use, people who needed to die, and little people completely beneath her interest. By virtue of who and what she was, Shepard was firmly _out_ of the 'disinterest' category.

So Shepard could either prove herself an asset or a liability. The smallest gestures, such as the offer of the drink, meant volumes. Had Shepard refused the drink it would show disrespect and distrust, and the only response could be offense. One didn't refuse a gift in this culture from anyone with even a small amount of power. To do so was to make an instant enemy. Countless people had died over something as simple as refusing an offered drink.

Choosing the pris para showed that Shepard not only respected the asari culture but that she wasn't weak, didn't shy from pain. Drinking pris para was much like sucking on acid that was mildly cherry flavored.

Now, after Shepard's inquiry over Archangel, Aria had off-handedly mentioned her dancer. There were nuances of answer here, as well…ones that could get her instantly shot, or ones that could earn a huge amount of respect.

To brush off Aria's inquiry and try and force the conversation back to Archangel would have shown that Shepard felt Aria was beneath her, a subordinate to be bullied. It would show she was attempting a power-play, to undermine T'Loak's authority in front of her men. That scenario would have ended very badly, probably with first the poor innocent dancer being shot, and then Shepard.

To gush over or show far too much interest in the dancer, however, would show weakness, insincerity. Aria could assume Shepard was desperate, which would give her far too much power and leverage. Or she would decide Shepard was ego-stroking, flattering, nothing but an ass-kisser hoping to manipulate her. That would have incited her anger and disdain.

Of course, Aria could also have decided that too much interest in the dancer was an opportunity. It wasn't unheard of for pirates and crime lords in her position to ensnare with gifts, even gifts of other sentient beings. Aria could offer the dancer to Shepard, a scenario that had no good ending for anyone involved save Aria. The dancer could not refuse if she valued her own life or her family, so it was little better than slavery. Shepard could not refuse the gift without creating offense and she could not accept without creating obligation.

Shepard's goal was, of course, to stay on even ground. Her every action was designed to send the message that she did not consider herself above _or_ below Aria but rather a respectful equal willing to defer to her in her own territory, under her own rules. _Defer_…but _never_ bow.

And so, her response. Respectful enough to allow the deflection of conversation and to agree with Aria's choice in dancer, yet discouraging a full derailment of their discussion off what she needed. After a moment's pause (to show, of course, that Shepard as well could not just command her attention and therefore, gain the upper hand), Aria looked back at her and resumed the conversation, further securing the human's footing in their dynamic.

"Archangel has been making himself a pest, it's true. He's got idiots like the Blood Pack and Blue Suns all but chasing their own tails in frustration. He's a smart boy, though. Doesn't mess with me. The gangs have him cornered in some dead-end in the lower district. Even backed into a hole he's been biting every finger they stick in after him. It's driving them mad they haven't routed him out yet. I believe they're using one of the lower lounges in the club to recruit more freelancers to throw at him. I just want business to keep moving and the mutts to stop barking."

"Sounds like I should go and talk to the recruiters then."

"You do that," Aria smirked. "If you get him dead or off my station, all the better I think. Is that all you needed?"

"For now. I don't want to take up more of your time."

"Hmm," Aria half nodded. "I trust you can find your own way out?"

"Indeed. Thank you for the drink, and for the help."

Aria said nothing, only resumed watching the dancers. Rising Shepard walked down to the door, Miranda and Jacob following her silently.

The noise of the club erupted on them fully again, once out of Aria's lounge.

"That went…oddly well," Jacob shouted over the music as they reached the lower level. "I'm surprised she just gave you that info about Archangel and didn't ask for anything in return."

"She did," Shepard shouted back. "She wants him dead or off her station. No matter what else happens, if I don't make him gone very shortly Aria will be certain to make her displeasure at me clear."

"Are you sure? It just sounded to me like she was just kind of…_hoping_ that would happen."

"Trust me, when dealing with crime lords, there are no allusions or vague hopes, there are only what you better do if you don't want a lot of bad to rain down on your head," Shepard replied.

"Just so long as we don't piss her off. This mission is going to have enough obstacles without throwing Aria T'Loak in on top of them," Miranda interjected.

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. Trust me, so far I'm fucking _golden _as far as she's concerned. Looks like that's where they're talking to recruits, over there. C'mon."

Abandoning any further attempt at conversation, Shepard headed on a weaving course into the oblivious crowd.


	8. Chapter 8

The small private lounge, like Aria's loft, was almost perfectly sound-proof. The rumbling storm of music cut off almost completely as soon as the door slipped shut.

A batarian was sitting on a low bench inside, dressed in armor blazoned with the Blue Suns tag. His face was haggard and scarred, one of his four eyes lost in a tangle of scar tissue. Looking up from a PDA in his hand and focusing on Shepard and Lawson he smirked a little.

"Sorry ladies, stripper auditions are the next lounge over."

"Watch your mouth," Jacob scowled.

"It's all right, Jacob," Shepard smirked, folding her arms. "He's just jealous because mine is bigger than his."

The batarian set the PDA aside and stood up. "You wanna test that theor-" he started, hand going to the pistol on his hip. He cut off a breath later as the barrel of Shepard's Miitgard crammed painfully up under his chin.

"Theory _proven_, I think," Shepard growled. The batarian narrowed his eyes a little, then smirked.

"Finally, some goddamn _spirit_," he said. "I've been getting every whiner and wet-end on this goddamn station in here, thinking they've got balls bigger than asteroids because they know which end of the gun to hang on to. They're good for cannon fodder but that's about all. Mind taking your weapon out of my face so we can talk details?"

She lowered the rifle, shipping it again as the batarian bent and picked up the PDA. "I want to make it clear you're freelancing only," he said. "We're not looking for new recruits. Pay is five hundred a head once the bastard goes down, and your friends do not collect your share if you take one between the eyes."

"Is Archangel by himself?" Shepard asked. The batarian scowled.

"Yeah, but don't get cocky. Sonuvabitch has got himself squirreled away nice and tight, and he's been picking off you freelancers by the dozens. Most last about five minutes. You…I'd give you at least ten. Go outside, west end of the plaza. There's one of my boys, Salkie, waiting there. Tell him Rodo said you were good and he'll shuttle you to the site."

Turning, Shepard strode back to the door, coming up short as it slid open and she nearly ran into someone entering.

It was a kid, probably not a day over fifteen. His brown eyes were earnest and smug as he blinked at her, then cocked what he probably supposed was a charming grin. "Well, hey baby," he cooed. "That is some _wild_ ink."

He was referring, of course, to the thin red lines that were still visible over her cheeks and forehead, mistaking them for some kind of tattoo.

"Thanks, it was _expensive_," she replied sarcastically, half glancing at the stone-faced Miranda. Spotting the pistol jammed in the front of his belt she said, "You here for the freelancer gig?"

"Fuck _yeah_," he bragged, then pulled the pistol out. "Gonna break this baby _in_."

"May I?" she asked, holding out her hand. He passed her the pistol…a move which only proved just how out of touch with reality this kid was. He'd probably grown up just one step off the streets, poor enough to fit in with a more desperate crowd but still with a roof over his head, food in his stomach. He'd learned that so long as you _acted _tough, most smaller than you didn't push it. They even showed you respect. At most, he may have been in a fight or two and been lucky enough to win…or _unlucky_ enough. Combine that with a teenage ego that thought he was immortal and untouchable and the kid was ripe for getting his ass handed to him.

He was so secure in himself that he handed her, a complete _stranger_, his only weapon. Shepard didn't correct him. Instead she looked over the pistol admiringly, checking the sight before ratcheting it open.

"Serris Mark IV, not bad," she lauded. "How much you pay for this?"

"Fifty creds, I got it at a steal," he grinned. She lifted her brows as if impressed.

"Most of these go one fifty new, easy," she told him. "You have to be careful though. See this here?"

Slipping her finger into the open weapon she indicated a small piece of thin metal. Part of the firing assembly, it was in place to keep the ratchet tracked along a straight line.

"Yeah, that's the guide," he said, as if everyone knew what it was.

"Yeah, see…problem with the Mark IV is they don't weld them down tight enough. See how it swings a little?" She shifted it with her finger, demonstrating that it was slightly loose. "When you're firing, if that guide swings just far enough over it'll catch on the ratchet and jam up your gun. And if it gets bent…"

Moving the guide out with her finger until it actually protruded from the weapon, Shepard turned and slammed the pistol hard against the wall. The boy barked in surprised alarm.

"Hey! What are you _doing_?"

Shepard turned back to him and showed him the now impossibly bent guide sticking out of the firing mechanism. "…then the gun becomes nothing more than a fancy looking paperweight, you see?"

She tried to ratchet it closed again but of course the mechanism jammed against the damaged guide. She pulled the trigger, but nothing happened save a click.

"You broke my fucking gun, bitch!" he wailed, snatching it out of her hand and frantically trying to bend the guide back. He only managed to snap it off, rendering the pistol even more useless.

"I saved your fucking life, _kid_," Shepard replied as she stepped past him and up toward the club. "Don't be in such a fucking hurry to die."

* * *

><p>The occasional snap of a distant gunshot broke through the smoky atmosphere. The air filters in this building were clearly faulty or broken altogether, and the haze leaking underneath the door from the next room was enough to make Miranda's eyes water a little.<p>

Eclipse, the Blood Pack, and the Blue Suns had holed up in this building at the start of a narrow boulevard, deep in the slums of Omega's lower districts, setting up a kind of HQ. According to what they'd learned so far, Archangel was alone in another building a block away, separated from this one by a bridge. They'd had him cornered in there for two days now, unable to ferret him out.

It was the bridge that was the major obstacle. Open the entire length, and completely visible from the second story windows of Archangel's hidey-hole, anyone trying to cross it to get to him was greeted by a sniper bullet. The gangs themselves were trying to figure out an alternate way into the building but so far had been unsuccessful. The only other way, it seemed, was to cut in through the vent tunnels and into the basement of Archangel's building, but the walls were thick enough only heavy explosives would do…explosives that were proving almost impossible to get.

The strategic thing to do would be to simply starve the man out. He was trapped, no access to food, none to water since they'd shut off the building's aqua-feed. He didn't dare sleep and had to be exhausted. Another day or two of simply waiting and the man would either become so sloppy that they could take him out, or he'd drop dead from dehydration and exhaustion.

Unfortunately, these were merc gangs, and they were not known for their patience. They didn't want to take the sure course and starve their enemy into submission. They wanted him dead. _Now_. And preferably in the most painful way possible.

From what they'd been able to glean the merc leaders were planning to send a wave of the new freelancers on a full out charge across the bridge, backed up by small mechs. It was a suicide run, of course, but the hope was that while Archangel was distracted with the freelancers, a small infiltration team would be able to slip past the carnage and get into the building to take him out.

Almost as soon as reaching the HQ, she, Shepard and Jacob had split up, trying to gather as much intel about the merc set-up as possible. Jacob and Miranda had rejoined company in the storage room just a few minutes ago, but Shepard had yet to return.

"I have to say she's nothing like I expected," Jacob stated, looking over at his friend.

"Who? Shepard?" Miranda replied. "She's _exactly_ as I expected."

"Course she is. You spent two years studying her. You probably know more about her than _she_ does. I wasn't privy to all her private records and vids though, remember?"

"Well what was it that you expected?" Miranda asked.

"I don't know," he told her honestly. "I kind of always pictured her a bit more quiet, you know? Reserved. That stoicism you always see in decorated generals…stone-faced and stern. She looks smaller than I thought she would too."

"Well, she still has some filling out to do. Her muscles haven't returned to their former condition quite yet, and she was two years on IV only nutrition. A few more meals and that gaunt look about her will disappear."

"Yeah, but not quite what I meant," he told her. "She does have a lot of energy for such a little package, though. The way she handled Aria was stellar, and then that kid…I wasn't expecting that."

"Shepard has a soft-spot for those who can't protect themselves…even _from_ themselves. That's part of the reason we chose her, you know that. And she doesn't give up."

"You do realize that means she won't give up looking for Dr. T'Soni," Jacob pointed out.

"That is being taken care of," Miranda stated.

"Is it," Jacob stated disapprovingly. "I don't th-"

He broke off as the door to the storage room opened, Shepard entering in a swirl of smoke. Behind her they could see a group of Eclipse gathered around a table, playing some card game amidst the detritus of a meal and several beers.

As the door shut behind her Shepard asked, "You two hear the plan?"

"The suicide charge? Yeah, we heard," Jacob told her.

"They have a heavy mech," Miranda stated. "It's charging in the basement. It seems they either trust their freelancers a bit too much or don't consider us a threat…they didn't even have it guarded."

"Did you take it out?" Shepard asked. Miranda shook her head.

"Better. I reprogrammed it. if they try and activate it, it will turn on their own men."

For the first time, Miranda found herself on the receiving end of a genuine grin from the Commander.

"_Nice_. Good work. I heard they have a gunship too, not too far from here. Apparently Archangel was able to take it out once but it's under repairs. A Sergeant Cathka is heading the maintenance team and lucky for us, the freelancers are gathering not too far from there. I say we go pay Cathka a visit, see if we can't hedge our bets a bit further."

* * *

><p>A clot of freelancers, around twenty, were gathered just outside the large maintenance area, sharing smokes with a couple of the mechanics and bragging about which one of them was going to put a bullet in Archangel's head. The three slipped into the gunship's dock unnoticed, and a few minutes later slipped back out again. As they rejoined the gathering, Shepard reached out and drummed the back of her fingers against the shoulder-pad of one of the men. When he looked at her she nodded toward the cigarette in his mouth.<p>

"Can I bum one?" she asked. Squinting at her, he drew out a pack and, tapping one out an inch, held it toward her. She drew the smoke out, promptly snapping off the filter and flicking it away, before tucking it in her mouth and accepting his lighter.

She sighed at the first draw, the sound a mix of pleasure and disgust. The freelancer smirked.

"You don't look too happy with that," he said.

"I fucking hate cigarettes," she told him. "Normally I stick to cigars."

One of his dark eyebrows lifted a little. "Women don't usually like cigars," he stated. "In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anyone beyond big ugly militia-men chomp down on a stogie in my life."

"I like to think I'm a bit unusual," she replied.

"Yeah…I bet you are," he told her, then held out one hand. "Name's Joseph Conroy."

She squinted a bit, before taking the butt from her mouth and exhaling a stream of smoke, then taking his hand. "Del."

"Nice to meet you, Del," he grinned. "So…does assaulting a do-gooder in his fortress land on your resume under 'unusual' as well?"

Shepard snorted, taking another draw. "Conroy, you said? I ain't flirting with you. I just wanted a smoke."

"Hmm. Maybe you _are_ and you just don't know it yet," he chuckled. Shepard looked at him dryly.

"_Trust_ me. I ain't."

"Let me guess. I'm too pretty for you," he joked good-naturedly. Shepard smirked and gave him a wink.

"Not pretty _enough_," she told him, and he barked a laugh.

"All right!" A voice barked. A rather large krogan in the red armor of the Blood Pack strode up, glaring over the group in general. "You freelancers get in position! We hit that bridge in _two_!"

"Well, nice to meet you, Del," Joseph told her, dropping the butt of his smoke and grinding it out under his boot. "Hope to see you in one piece on the other side."

She shrugged, flicking her own smoke away. "Watch your back, Conroy, and you might."

As the freelancers moved toward the barricade at the end of the bridge, Shepard fell back to Miranda and Jacob's side. "We go in at the tail end of the pack," she told them. "Hit them from behind, take out as many as you can before they get across and then focus on getting your asses into the building. Hopefully Archangel will see us doing half his job for him and realize we're on his side, but just in case he _doesn't_, watch that goddamn sniper fire. If the infiltration team makes it inside we'll have to take them out too before we can get to the second floor."

"Once we do get in, how are we going to get out again with Archangel?" Jacob asked.

"The fuck you asking me for? I make this shit up as I go," Shepard retorted, and moved toward the barricade. Jacob blinked at Miranda.

"Tell me she's kidding."

Miranda just looked at him, then followed after the commander.

* * *

><p>There was a general roar of bravado as the decoy pack of freelancers surged over the barricade and rushed out onto the bridge. Gunfire opened in a furious halo of carnage, focused on the second story windows where Archangel lurked.<p>

Snap.

The sound was almost lost in the cacophony, but the visual pop of a skull could not be missed. The already dead man skipped on his feet and slammed to the ground in a rain of blood, and he was only the first to fall.

Snap. Snap.

Despite the cover fire, despite the sheer number of men and women charging onto the bridge, Archangel was holding his cool. He was low, firing from an angle that afforded him complete cover, and taking down an attacker with every swift flash from his sniper.

Snap.

Shepard, near the back of the pack with the other two, did not charge up the middle of the bridge but flanked the side. Immediately in front of her she caught sight of Joseph Conroy, the man wisely taking the same tack. Shifting her grip on her rifle she jabbed the butt of it sharply forward, colliding with his skull right at the base. He folded like wet laundry, unconscious.

"Thanks for the smoke," Shepard panted to the limp form as she stepped over him and righted her gun.

Three freelancers fell as she opened fire. Normally she was not one for shooting people in the back, but exceptions had to be made for nearly every rule. Jacob added his own gunfire, chewing through the charging group from behind even as Archangel sniped from the front.

Miranda was not shooting. Instead she had generated a biotic shield, protecting their flank from the direction of the barricade. The moment the gangs saw that three of their freelancers had gone rogue they'd be open to gunfire from that quarter as well.

Four more freelancers dropped to Shepard's gun before she felt a slap against her shoulder, hard enough to turn her a little but not enough to penetrate the padding. _That _shot had been Archangel. Scowling, she opened fire on the lancers again.

Confusion was churning through what was left of the group, the survivors realizing they were being gunned down from behind as well as before. When one turned toward Shepard, lifting his weapon, she smoothly shot him in the throat and then ran over his corpse. Another turned only to be taken down by Archangel.

_I think the fucker has finally realized_ _we're on the same team_.

The last of the pack of freelancers fell even as the trio reached the lower floor of Archangel's hideout. Two of the infiltration team had made it in. One took a potshot at them as they entered and was quickly dropped as Shepard headed for the stairs.

Archangel had, naturally, secured the door leading into his make-shift bunker. The second infiltrator, unaware of what had happened downstairs, was busy trying to hack it. His efforts halted abruptly with a bullet, just as he managed to get the lock open.

Kicking his pistol away from his dead hand, Shepard strode into the room, not lowering her rifle.

Archangel was across the room, on the small sheltered balcony overlooking the bridge. Even crouched, back to the door and in a full combat hard-suit, it was clear he was turian.

She was a bit surprised when he didn't turn around, his sniper rifle still fixed on the bridge below. Not lowering her rifle she called out, "Knock knock!"

He didn't try and take a shot at her, which she had half-expected. He didn't jump or so much as turn his head. Instead, he lifted one hand in a universal 'one second' gesture, then returned his grip to his gun. A breath later the sniper rifle fired. His target must have dropped because he straightened a little, drawing back from his position and getting to his feet.

Sitting wearily on an overturned sofa he pulled his helmet off, exhausted gray-blue eyes fixing to hers.

"You didn't vanish," the turian said with weary amusement. "Guess that means you're real."

Shepard lowered her rifle with a blink. "Garrus? Holy fuck, what are _you_ doing here?"

"You're asking me?" he snorted. "Last I knew, you were _dead_, Shepard."

"Long story," she told him, then looked at Taylor. "Jacob, see if you can't re-secure that door, and keep an eye on the stairs."

As he turned away she shipped her rifle and went over to the turian's side, crouching down and looking at him critically. "You hurt?"

"Nah," he replied. "But I've been going for two days straight. I'm exhausted. Truth told when I saw you coming up that bridge I thought I was hallucinating."

"That why you took that shot at me?" she smirked. "To see if I'd pop?"

"It was just a concussive round. Can't blame a man for making sure." He held out his hand. "It's good to see you again, Shepard."

She took his hand, slapping it lightly with her other. "It's good to see you again, too, Garrus."

"What happened? I _know_ you were dead, Shepard. There were rumors for a time, you know the kind. Conspiracy theorists and fringe whack-jobs who tried to insist that you were on some covert op somewhere but we all knew better. Even if you'd accepted some weird undercover op there's no _way _you'd let the Alliance pull you from duty in such a way as to put your crew at risk, and you sure as hell wouldn't let _Liara_ think you were dead."

Shepard shook her head. "No, you're right. I _was_ dead, Garrus."

She gestured toward Miranda, who had moved to the balcony vantage point to keep an eye on the bridge and to give them a moment to talk. "Cerberus, apparently, found my body and spent two years putting me back together."

"Cerberus," he grimaced a little.

"Yeah, I know. It really is a long story, Garrus…one I'll be glad to tell over a good meal and a stiff drink back aboard ship, but right now we've got to get you out of here."

"You bring an army with you?"

"No, it's just us three."

"Then that's going to be tough," he replied, then commiserated, "But not impossible. I've held this building for days now thanks to that bridge. Should be even easier with the three of you here, but getting out that way is just as much suicide as getting in."

"Shepard, I have movement behind the barricade," Miranda announced. Shepard rose and headed over as Garrus got to his feet. A spare sniper rifle and a few boxes of thermal clips were set against the wall nearby. Picking up the rifle Shepard lifted the scope to her eye and carefully turned it onto the bridge below.

"They're sending their small mechs," she said as she scanned over the scene. As the first cleared the barricade she focused on its eye-lights and fired. The mech collapsed and she lowered the sniper, looking at the others. "Looks like our dance card isn't quite full yet. Miranda, Garrus and I will hit them as they come over the bridge. You and Jacob make sure no one makes it through that door downstairs."

As the turian took up a position near her he smiled sadly. "Almost like the old days."

"Oorah," Shepard murmured and lifted the scope to her eye once again.

* * *

><p>It wasn't until the gunship appeared that things started going so far sideways that even Shepard started to worry.<p>

The mercs may have been desperate, they may have thrown most strategic sense out of the window, but they were pushing and pushing hard, and had sheer numbers on their side. After an onslaught of mechs and Eclipse which were only partially turned back by the tampered heavy (the moment that heavy had turned and started firing on the Eclipse troops was a moment Shepard wished she could have on vid), there was only a brief hiatus before the Suns, apparently, finally secured sufficient explosives to blast their way into the basement.

The eruption had shaken the entire building. Shepard and Miranda had rushed down to the basement to turn back the tide of incoming mercs and seal them out again while Jacob and Garrus were left to thwart those trying to take advantage by rushing the bridge. It had been hard work forcing the Suns back into their tunnel far enough to close the emergency vent doors and reseal the basement, and Shepard was still not up to her full strength. Her muscles were seriously protesting their overuse as she and Miranda charged back upstairs, only to be greeted by a rain of death as the gunship swooped over the balcony and dumped a dozen of the Blood Pack directly into the second floor.

They were cut off from Garrus and Jacob, forced back to the stairwell.

Vorcha, the sentient equivalent of rats and cockroaches, swarmed them. Tenacious, vicious, the vorcha had teeth like daggers and were not averse to biting in combination with shooting and stabbing. They were also extremely hard to kill, often taking twice as many bullets as any other race before they would finally go down.

As Shepard slammed her rifle butt into the grinning teeth of one that clambered over the stair railing, Jacob suddenly shouted over her ear bud.

_{We're getting torn up Commander! Garrus is down!}_

"Fuck! We're swarmed with vorcha! Where's that gunship?" Shepard barked back.

_{Gunship is history but I'm pinned. There's a couple of very angry krogan in here!}_

"We're coming!"

She ducked flailing limbs as Miranda sent four vorcha sailing over her head with a biotic blast. Turning to shower the ones below them with rifle fire, Shepard's eyes suddenly widened.

Whirling she grabbed hold of Miranda, throwing the other woman down onto the stairs hard enough to make her bark with pain. A breath later a heavy cough of flame scattered the vorcha pack in a flaming mess of body parts, tearing up the lower staircase right along with them. Shepard snatched for the railing as the stairway beneath them groaned and then leaned to the side, settling at a right hand list.

Lifting her head, she looked down as Joseph Conroy shipped his rocket launcher and drew a pistol, evacuating the skull of one of the dazed and injured beasts.

Her own pistol snapped up to aim at him, but wisely he did not return the gesture. "Well, go on then," he told her impatiently. "Angry krogan and all that, remember?"

Narrowing her eyes, she pushed herself to her feet, pulling Miranda up with her and then rushing for their companions.

Garrus was indeed down, limp in a slowly spreading pool of sapphire. The krogan had Jacob pinned behind the sofa at the other end.

Shepard opened fire on the nearest, drawing his attention as Miranda sent the second flying off the balcony with the biotic equivalent of a backhand. As the first krogan brought his gun around, mouth opening for a battle cry, Shepard landed two shots squarely in his eyes, popping them in flat spats of blood and fluid. His battle cry emerged instead as a death rattle, and he collapsed.

For the first time in what felt like hours, silence reigned. Shepard shipped her pistol, rushing forward to the turian's side.

"Garrus!"

He was still, one hand outstretched toward his sniper rifle which lay just out of reach. Shepard gripped his shoulder, certain he was gone, certain she had failed yet another friend…when suddenly his eyes flew open and he gasped. The sound was wet, thick, as his fingers momentarily stretched again toward his weapon.

"No, don't move," she urged.

"We have to get him to Chakwas, now," Miranda said, her omni-tool lighting as she scanned him. "His wounds are bad, Shepard…he doesn't have much time."

Shepard's eyes snapped up to Jacob, who limped over, clasping one arm that was also bleeding. "How bad?" she demanded.

"Some flesh, nothing serious," he replied.

"Notify the _Normandy_ that we're coming. Is there a hospital…a clinic even, on this level?"

"Yes."

The answer came from the doorway. Shepard's gaze turned toward Joseph, standing there and calmly watching. When she looked at him his eyes lifted from the turian to hers. "There's a small clinic less than a block from here. They won't have the facilities to treat these kinds of injuries but they will have means to keep him stabilized and transport him."

"Call them, get someone here _now_," she ordered. She had no idea who this man really was, or why he was even attempting to help them, but she didn't have time to question or argue right now. She wasn't going to lose another friend, goddamnit. Not now and sure as _fuck_ not like this.

That he _was_ helping was enough for the moment. She'd sort out the reasons later.

Gripping hold of the turian's hand, noticing his eyes were still open if glazed with pain, she leaned over. "You just hang in there, Garrus. That's a goddamn _order_."

* * *

><p>The med team from the small clinic nearby appeared not too long after, looking incredibly nervous and jumpy as they gaped around at the war zone that surrounded them. With a little aide from a biotic bubble from Miranda, they got Garrus lifted onto a hover-gurney. Jacob, who'd already plastered his wound with their small field supply of medi-gel, waved off their attention.<p>

Getting down the ruined stairs was a bit tricky. When they reached ground level, Shepard moved ahead to make sure that none of the mercs had lingered behind, clearing the way for the gurney to pass as quickly and as easily as possible.

A shuttle from the _Normandy, _complete with Chakwas and her team, met them not far away and as they loaded on board Shepard noticed that Conroy was gone. With an irritated scowl she waved away the clinic docs and closed the shuttle door, letting Chakwas take over treatment. In minutes they were back aboard the ship, Garrus vanishing into the med bay in a flurry of activity.

"Chakwas is good," Jacob told her. "Garrus will be all right."

"I know she's good," Shepard replied, irritation still coloring her voice. "Garrus is tough, he'll pull through."

She couldn't focus on Garrus and how badly he was injured, what might happen to him. Emotionally she'd been through way too much the last few days and had been given little time to adjust to any of it. To let her fears in even a little right now would be giving them free rein to run rampant…and send her spiraling into places she had no want to go.

Instead she put her energies into being a commander.

"Jacob, you're off duty until the doctors treat and clear that arm. Miranda, I want you to find out anything you can on that merc, Joseph Conroy. I don't buy that he just decided to lend a helping hand, not after I half-cracked his goddamn skull. I want to know _who_ he is, _why_ he was there, and _where_ he's gone."

"Certainly, Shepard," Miranda replied. "I'll see if I can't pinpoint Mordin Solus and Zaeed Massani as well."

Shepard turned, striding for the elevator even as she unbuckled her armor breastplate. "And I want to know the moment the docs have word about Garrus!" she barked as she did so.

Miranda watched her until the doors slid shut, then looked at Jacob. "Shepard's right. I don't buy for a moment that it's coincidence this man just decided to help us. There's got to be more to the story."

"Could just be he was there for the creds, then realized he was hardly on the paying side."

"That's motivation to _leave_, not motivation to risk himself to help people for _no_ profit."

"Not everything is about creds. Maybe he's just a good guy."

"Really? Under any other circumstances might be right. But this is a merc, a hired freelancer on Omega. He was promised money to do a job, and that money fell through. Risking his life for no pay is one thing, but what happens if the Blood Pack, Blue Suns or Eclipse find out that he helped Archangel escape? He'll have a thousand and one thugs gunning for him…all to help someone he doesn't know, who, as Shepard pointed out, hit him in the head with her rifle. I find it impossible to believe his _only_ motivation was the kindness of his heart."


	9. Chapter 9

Shepard didn't notice the cases at first as she entered her quarters. Her mind was on Garrus and the strange Mr. Conroy, hoping the former pulled through and wondering just what the fuck was up with the latter.

Garrus being on Omega, being Archangel, was both unexpected and yet, not the least bit of a surprise. The former C-Sec officer had chafed under the rules and red-tape of his official position…it was part of why he left to help Shepard track down Saren Arterius in the first place. For him to decide to go vigilante was right in stride with what she'd expected from him…and apparently, he'd had some talent at it. Talent enough to make himself a serious nuisance to the merc dogs on Omega, at any rate.

_Talent enough that his dossier caught your attention_, she reminded herself. Stepping through her small office area, her hard-suit chest-plate in hand, her eyes finally landed on the bed, and she halted.

Four black cases rested there. Three, though of varying sizes, were square. The shape of the fourth made its contents unmistakable.

"EDI, get me Chambers," Shepard ordered as she set her breast-plate aside and began to shed the rest of her hard-suit mechanically.

_{Yes, Commander?}_ Kelly's voice spoke a moment later.

"There are a number of cases in my room. Something I should know?"

_{They were delivered to the_ Normandy _less than an hour ago, Commander_,} the yeoman replied. _{They were not expected but went through full security scans and inspections, and are clean.}_

"Delivered? By who?"

_{A service. The sender apparently wished to remain anonymous.}_

Shepard frowned. The only people who even knew she was still alive were on this ship…except Aria T'Loak and the few goons she'd had in her lounge when Shepard had visited. Aria had no cause or motivation to send her _anything_, and anyone on this ship would simply have brought them to her personally, not used a service.

_That's not entirely true. The Illusive Man knows, and probably half of Cerberus. _

_Yeah, but again…they'd hardly have any reason to send me packages anonymously. If the Illusive Man had wanted me to have something he'd have either made arrangements with Lawson or he'd have had it waiting here when I first came on board._

Going over, she touched the first case. There was no hiding what it contained, the shape was a dead give-away…and proof the sender was someone who _knew_ her. Cautiously unsnapping the latches she opened the velvet lined box.

Before the _Normandy_ had been destroyed, Shepard had hauled around an old, antique acoustic guitar. She'd come upon it quite by accident when she was sixteen years old. Guitars like this were rare these days, most for the last thirty years having been made with holographic interfaces instead of strings. She'd taught herself to play, and it was one of the few things that brought her peace, that centered her soul.

This was not that same guitar, of course, but as the first, it was an acoustic with actual strings. Where her original instrument had been a classical with a traditional finish (one rather scuffed and scratched with age), this was an arch top steel, lacquered black and looked as if it had never been touched. An artist of some caliber had painted a pair of blue roses along its lower flank, the flowers rendered so as to almost look three-dimensional.

This was no antique. She could tell even before she touched it. Regardless of its lack of HI, this was a brand-new instrument.

Lifting it from the case as she sat on the bed, she felt the slide of the strings beneath her fingers. A few practice plucks told her it was not quite in tune but close.

It was utterly beautiful, and utterly personal. Only a friend would have thought to give her something like this. Only a very _close_ friend would have understood what a guitar gave to her.

Setting the guitar back in its bed she opened the other cases, and what they revealed only solidified her initial suspicion.

The first contained four large bottles, two of expensive Red Line Whiskey, and two of Thessia Shimmerfall Pris Para. The second box held what had to be five hundred Gold Label cigars, more than she could hope to smoke in the next year. The rich scent filled the air as she ran her fingers over their neatly ordered ranks. Tucked in its own pocket in the cigar case was a hand-carved, old-fashioned flint wheel-lighter, a far cry from the utilitarian electric-pulse lighter she'd used before.

From the final box, Shepard drew out a well-oiled swagman. As the guitar it was not scuffed and used as her old one had been but new enough that the rich smell of the leather almost overpowered that of the cigars as she lifted it free.

She knew now, beyond a doubt, who her anonymous benefactor was. There was no note, no confirmation but only one person would have done all this.

_Liara knows I'm alive. Somehow, someone found her, someone told her. She knows I'm alive._

Had the Illusive Man located her? Had he sent her a message, made a call, and explained what they had done, that Shepard was alive? Alive…and wanted to see her?

_Someone_ had found her, whether that was the Illusive Man or Lawson or even Tali. _Someone_ had located the young asari scientist and told her…and this was the response.

The gifts showed a concern for Shepard's comforts, for her welfare. Liara knew that the guitar was often the only escape into peace she had. She knew Shepard's odd psychological addiction to the cigars. The whiskey and the hat…these were who Shepard _was_, ties to the only home she'd really known, to the only happy days of her past.

Yet Liara had not come in person. She had left no note, no explanations, no other indication of joy and relief that Shepard was alive.

And Shepard knew why. Because this Feron was real, and important to her. He made her happy. He had filled the emptiness left when Shepard had died. He had been there for Liara when she could not. Liara didn't know how to tell her all of that, didn't want to tear apart the new life she had found. She had sent the gifts as a gesture of concern and friendship yes, but also as atonement, an apology that what had been between them was no longer. Things just could not be as they might once have been.

Sitting there with the hat in her hands, the rich smell of leather and cigars filling the air, Shepard's unfocused gaze stared off into the ether, into realms unseen and unexplored by any who had never experienced loss.

When she'd stripped out of her hard-suit she'd returned her Miitgard rifle to the rack but the holster belt she'd only draped over the partition between office area and bedroom.

Slowly her gaze lifted to it…or more specifically, to the machine pistols clipped to it, waiting with quiet, solemn urgency.

* * *

><p>"What do you mean, <em>packages<em>?" Miranda frowned at Kelly as the pair stood in the CIC. "Packages from whom?"

"Unknown," Kelly admitted. "The courier did not have a name. As I told Shepard the packages were thoroughly scanned and inspected."

"Only a small handful of people even know Shepard is alive. And most of them are on board this ship. Who would be sending her-"

"There has just been a weapons discharge in Commander Shepard's quarters," EDI suddenly appeared, speaking urgently.

"What?" Miranda's folded arms dropped as alarm spread over her face…the first time Kelly Chambers had ever seen the operative anything but composed. Immediately turning Miranda ran for the lift, waving over one of the security officers as she did. Kelly did not hesitate to follow as well.

The lift bore the three swiftly upward. The door to the commander's actual quarters was locked, but Miranda swiftly used her security access to override it.

As the door slid opened to allow the three into the Nest, the bark of a pistol firing snapped suddenly through the air, followed instantly by the distinctive crash of glass.

Miranda instinctively half-ducked, even as she drew her own side-arm and rushed to the steps that led down into the bedroom. There she halted, the officer at her side doing the same, Kelly a moment later.

Shepard sat on her office chair, which was tipped back against the edge of the bed. She had one foot planted on her footlocker and was rocking herself back and forth on the back two legs of the chair. The new leather swagman was on her head, tugged down at a jaunty angle, its hem wreathed in smoke drifting up from the cigar in her mouth.

In her left hand she held a half empty bottle of Red Line Whiskey. In her right was one of her machine pistols. Lined up on the partition between bedroom and office were several beer bottles taken from the in-room cooler. Two were shattered, the ripe smell of foaming beer mingling with the heady scent of the cigar.

"Shepard? What are you doing?" Lawson blinked.

"My fucking nails," Shepard replied sarcastically, then pointed at the third bottle. "Check this out."

Shepard plucked her cigar out with two fingers on the hand holding the whiskey, a move perfected after years of practice. Taking a swig directly from the bottle, tipping both her head and the chair backward as she did so, Shepard pointed the machine pistol and let off a round. The third in the line of bottles erupted as the shot tore through it, shattering in a rain of glass and thick amber froth.

"Did you fuckin' _see_ that?" Shepard hooted. "My small arms instructor in boot would have _shit_ herself!"

Shipping her side-arm, Miranda dismissed the security officer. As he departed Kelly went down the steps, looking at the items spread out over the bed.

Miranda did not come down the stairs, simply regarded Shepard silently. She wished she could say it was a surprise to see Shepard smoking and downing whiskey like she needed it to breathe, but it wasn't. She had hoped that Shepard's tendency toward self-destructive habits could be curbed, tempered. This little display was not an encouraging sign to that end.

"Shepard, I don't think it's a good idea to be discharging your firearm in your room," she said as gently as she was able.

"Oh, don't you?" Shepard asked, and promptly shot the next beer.

"Look, I know this all has to be frustrating for you-"

"You _know_?" Shepard asked, lowering her feet so that the chair fell to all fours. Setting the pistol down on the footlocker and then the whiskey beside it she squinted at Lawson from under the brim of her hat.

"Not first-hand but I can imagine, Shepard. I do have some degree of empathy."

"Which of your friends sent these things?" Chambers asked. Shepard glanced around at her with a faint grunt.

"Liara did."

"You know that for certain?" Miranda asked.

"Yeah, I know for certain. She's the only one that would have," Shepard retorted. "Which means she knows I'm alive. Believe it or not, this shit is the 'sweet' version of a _Dear John_ letter."

"I'm sorry, Commander," Kelly said gently. Shepard looked at her oddly, not quite able to grok why the yeoman was even there. Miranda's motivation to be there was clear. Her reason for bringing the security officer was also clear. Shepard doubted, however, that Miranda felt Shepard needed an emergency dictate and collate session. "I wonder how she discovered you were still alive?"

"I don't know. I wish I could fucking _ask_ her," Shepard replied.

"She works for the Shadow Broker," Miranda stated. "Some intel must have leaked and he passed it on to her. Shepard, I _am_ sorry, but two years is a long time. If Dr. T'Soni wanted to see or speak to you in person she would have done so. She clearly knows where you are-"

"_No shit_! I don't need you to sit there and parrot the obvious at me, Lawson. I _know_, all right? She's moved on with her life. She has someone else. I fucking _got that_, ok? It's been all but slapped in my face from the moment I woke up. _I get it._ It's not my place nor my right to disrupt her new life. Jesus _fucking _thank you."

"I'm not trying to be cruel," Miranda blinked. "You're here because you're needed."

"Yeah, _needed_. I know. Don't worry. I'll find your fucking Collectors and stop the fucking Reapers and get Nan back if I have to tear apart half the goddamn universe. And after I've done it, I want you and your entire fucking terrorist cult and the rest of this sorry ass galaxy to leave me the _fuck_ alone."

Rising she grabbed a jacket out of the closet and hauled it on, before snatching a handful of cigars and her new lighter, stuffing them in her pocket. She snatched up the machine pistol and clipped it into the belt she'd slung around her hips before Miranda and Kelly had arrived.

"Shepard, where are you going? Shepard?" Miranda started forward, then stopped when Kelly held up a hand, shaking her head.

Straightening the collar of the jacket with angry snaps of her hands Shepard strode up the steps and out the door.

Turning and looking at Chambers with a frown Miranda asked, "What was that all about? All that and you barely said a word to her!"

"Right now Shepard needs to decompress," Kelly told her. "She _needs_ to be angry, ma'am. She can't keep putting her feelings aside. A lot has happened to her in a very short amount of time, and she's had little opportunity to try and find her feet again. She's got to start processing all this and she has to do it on her own. It's not something anyone can help her with, not right now. To try would only shut her down further."

"And if she goes out and gets herself injured, or killed?" Miranda demanded.

"She's a big girl, and she's been a hell of a lot more dangerous places than _Omega_," Kelly replied. "She'll be back, ma'am, trust me."

* * *

><p>The thundering beat of full-blown sensory was still going strong at Afterlife, the club never so much as pausing in its eternal rapture. Weaving through the crowd, Shepard strode up to the guard at Aria's lounge again, knowing better than just to make an assumption and go in.<p>

"She here?" she asked. What buzz she'd gotten from the half bottle of Red Line was swiftly fading and her entire being was all but vibrating in want of another drink…or twelve. First things were first, however, and there was something she had to know.

The batarian squinted two of his eyes at her, before he nodded in recognition. Touching his radio he called, "Ma'am? Commander Shepard would like to see you again."

He nodded at whatever response filtered through, then jabbed a thumb at the lounge door. "Go on in."

As it had earlier, the closing door cut out nearly all the sound pulsing from the dance floor below. Unlike before, however, the room was not full of body-guards and hired guns. The two dancers were gone as well.

Aria stood before the sofa, looking out of the huge windows at the writhing mass of hedonism below. She had a drink in her hand. Two turians in armor were the only show of security, both barely looking at Shepard as she stepped in.

"I knew you'd be coming back," Aria said, glancing around at her, before lifting a brow. "Changed out of your working clothes, did you? I like it. You've got down-to-reality tastes. Like that you look just like your picture."

"What picture would that be, I wonder," Shepard replied, not really wondering at all.

"Come on, Shepard. I know why you're here. Let's not dance just now, all right? It makes me weary."

Setting her glass down she picked something up, something small, and gestured to Shepard to come over. As Shepard drew near she could see it was an OSD. Aria drew out a PDA and slid the OSD into it before activating it.

Then she turned the PDA silently, offering it to the commander. Wordlessly, Shepard took it.

Her own face looked back up at her. Her own face…and Liara's.

It was the last photo they had taken that night the _Normandy_ went down. Both lounging back against the bed, side by side. Shepard was half-smiling, focusing more on taking the actual shot. Liara's smile was more genuine, happy and comfortable.

The couple was frozen in a moment in time. They didn't know it, but in only seconds their world would shake and tremble as the _Normandy_ came under attack, as their peace was shattered forever.

"After you left here earlier today I contacted her, told her you were here."

Shepard's gaze moved from the image to Aria with a snap. "You contacted her? You know where she is?"

"Shepard, you and I both know how this galaxy works. It's dismal, bleak…and nothing is ever free."

"What do you want?" Shepard asked warily.

Aria waved a hand and shook her head. "That's not what I meant," she said. "Some time ago, Dr. T'Soni did me a favor. It put me into her debt…and I dislike being in anyone's debt. With your arrival I was able to repay her. She had asked me, that were you ever to come to Omega I was to let her know. When I did so this afternoon she made a request of me…a simple enough one to fulfill. I trust you received your packages? The cigars and alcohol were easy enough to come by. Even that lovely hat didn't cause me too much trouble. The instrument, however…where on Omega would I possibly find such an old, human-specific analog instrument?"

Shepard's head was spinning again. Aria T'Loak, underworld queen of Omega…had been in debt to _Liara_, a shy, sweet scientist who had no place in the dark underbelly of any society?

"Dr. T'Soni had apparently thought of that as well. Not five minutes after I was off the call from her than a salarian merchant contacted me that he had my delivery. Seems Liara had already anticipated you would arrive here soon and sent the instrument. It was good fortune it arrived with almost perfect timing."

"This…doesn't make any sense," Shepard murmured, her gaze returning to the photo in her hand. "Why were you in debt to _Liara_? And…how did she know I was even alive? She _had_ to know…that guitar was custom-made, sent ahead as you said…she _knew_ I was alive? She knew I would be coming here? _How?"_

"I'm only telling you what I know, Commander," Aria replied. "Dr. T'Soni did not reveal all her secrets to me, and I did not ask. She requested I send those items to your ship and I did so. That was all she asked to consider my debt paid in full but as it was such a small request…and since you took care of Archangel so swiftly and neatly…I am going to tip you that photo. She doesn't know I have it and I see little harm in giving it to you…a thank you, if you will, to you and to her. As far as providing you with her contact information that is a bridge we are not going to cross. Had she wanted to speak to you I have no doubt she would have requested I pass that along as well, or she would have tried contacting you directly. I have no desire to immerse myself any deeper into off-station affairs that have little to do with me, it will only bring unwanted irritation."

Had Aria been anyone else, Shepard wouldn't have let it drop. She'd have beaten the information out of her if she had to…but Aria was right. Liara didn't want to speak to her, didn't want to see her, and putting pressure on Aria would only bring down the brunt of her considerable power and influence.

_Liara knew I was alive…quite a while ago, to have that guitar commissioned. She_ knew _I was alive. How? Why? _

"Thank you," she murmured, slipping the OSD out of the PDA and passing the latter back to the asari woman.

"I will be seeing you around again, Shepard…of that I have no doubt. For now, good evening. You know where the door is."

As Shepard left the lounge and was once again immersed in the overwhelming music, one thought continued to ring in her head, louder than the waves of sensory could ever hope to be.

_She knew. I was alive…and she knew._

* * *

><p>"Well now, this <em>is<em> a coincidence."

The male voice that drew Shepard's eyes upward was familiar…and thankfully audible. She'd left Afterlife only to find another, smaller club a few streets away. Hardly catering to the same level of crowd the music was an awful blend of elcor and hanar, but it was at least mellow.

Into her third glass of charous (damned place didn't serve any decent human drinks at all), Shepard was once again well on her way toward drunk. As her eyes fixed on Joseph Conroy, the man smiled and gestured at the empty chair opposite her.

"May I?"

She made a half-hearted gesture of agreement and as he sat down, she plucked the cigar from her teeth and ashed it onto a nearby napkin.

"I see you found your proper smokes," he commented, drawing out his own pack of battered cigs. "Mind?"

She snorted her answer, and as he pulled one out and set it in his mouth, she spun her new lighter across the table. His hand came down and halted it, and he lifted a brow in approval before snapping it alight.

"You are a woman full of surprises, aren't you?" He asked as he passed the lighter back.

She leaned back in her chair, thumbing her swagman back a little, regarding him moodily. When she said nothing he ventured, "Not much in the mood to talk, I take it?"

"The fuck are you?" she grumped, picking up her drink.

"Just a man looking for a drink and a meal," he told her.

"Bullshit. I don't buy that you being here is just a coincidence. And I don't buy that you helped me and my people with Archangel out of the goodness of your heart. I _am_ in the mood to break some noses or relocate some kneecaps so why don't we take the easy road here, and you just tell me who you are and what the fuck you want."

"My name _is_ Joseph Conroy," he replied. "Former military like most mercs and now just trying to survive day to day. I have never lied to you, Commander."

"You know who I am?" she snapped.

"The Butcher of Torfan? First human Spectre and the hero of the Citadel? Al-Jilani and her media weasels plastered your image on a hundred different channels a dozen times a day when you were alive. After your death, the Alliance itself put you on posters, made you into the human ideal, the hero every little human boy and girl should aspire to be. Well, for about six months anyway, before they replaced you with a composite they invented. You might be able to blend in a little _here_, Shepard…but you're hardly impossible to recognize."

She scrutinized him a moment, letting out a stream of cigar smoke that all but obscured her eyes. "You were Alliance?"

"Once upon a time," he answered. Ashing his cigarette he waved for the waitress. As she went to fetch his drink he said, "I won't crowd you. It's clear you'd rather be in your own company right now. But I did want to thank you for saving my life. Twice, actually…by my count."

"Interesting math," she told him. "From my end it looked more like you saved _my_ life. _Once_."

He waved his hand with a faint smile, his eyes sparkling a little. "I wouldn't say that. You would have handled those vorcha just fine on your own, I have no doubt. I merely…evened the odds a bit, made things a tad easier. You, however, did knock me silly with the butt of your rifle when you could just as easily have shot me in the back or let Archangel put a bullet between my baby blues."

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "You gave me a smoke. Piss-fucking-poor one, mind, but it's just bad manners to shoot a man right after they give you a cig."

He chuckled a little. "Oh is it? I must have skipped that day at etiquette school."

She smirked, then shook her head. "Fine, so I knocked you on your ass rather than shoot you. That's _once_, and it still doesn't jive. If even one member of those merc gangs spotted you helping us your life wouldn't be worth a squirt in a back-alley toilet. So fucking _give_."

The waitress brought his drink and he winked at her before taking a healthy sip. "I served on the _Winnipeg_," he stated as he set the cup down. "Small fighter frigate in the fifth fleet. Whilst you were stopping the incursion on the Citadel and opening up the station we were hip deep in geth ships and, quite frankly, getting our asses handed to us. A lot of good men and women died…a lot of fine ships went down. The _Winnipeg_ was one of them."

Shepard said nothing, only looked at him, the deep simmering anger in her eyes fading a little, softening into sadness.

"We took a bad hit. Didn't directly compromise the core but it did breach containment. There was a bad eezo leak. Just before the ship came apart myself and seven others managed to make it to the lifeboats, but we were all exposed to lethal levels of radiation. I am the only one left. I have leukemia…of moderate severity. It was enough to get me an 'honorable' discharge from service with a fairly tiny pension, but I'm a soldier and not one to just lay around and wait to die. So I became a merc, doing odd jobs here on Omega."

He spoke as if describing the weather for an upcoming weekend holiday, and paused only to ash his cigarette. "My condition can't be cured, only treated. Eventually it will outrun the doctors and that will be that. I decided that I was doing little good for myself or for others, and that I would much rather die as a soldier than withered in a bed somewhere, too weak to even stand. I knew signing up that run against Archangel was suicide, but it was as good a way as any to die on my feet, holding a gun…the way I was meant to."

He smirked, gestured at her with the butt of his cigarette. "Then some pesky little ghost appears out of nowhere and asks me for a smoke. A marine, someone who _should_ have been dead…and up she pops like some kind of guardian angel…zombie…thing."

Shepard couldn't help herself. She laughed. "So the fact that my various body parts weren't orbiting some distant planet inspired you to live."

"My, you certainly do think a lot of yourself, don't you?" he teased, grinning when she laughed again.

Shrugging he stabbed the end of his smoke out in the tray nearby. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe in the end I _am_ just a fighter at heart. Maybe I just can't allow myself to give up. I suppose if there's something in this sorry universe important enough for _you_ to come back from the grave and fight for it…well, then maybe there's something important enough around for _me_ to fight for as well."

She hummed faintly, sipping at her drink. "Coming back from the grave wasn't exactly my choice," she murmured. "And I wonder if it wouldn't be better for everyone if I had just stayed dead."

"It's hard to know what to do sometimes," he agreed. "It's hard to understand what to feel. To have your very air taken away from you and yet still be expected to breathe."

She shook her head. "What _am_ I fighting for, Conroy?" she asked, then gestured to her left. A pair of drunks, barely able to stand, were struggling against one another, probably not even aware of why they were even brawling. "This? People like that, a galaxy that doesn't give a shit?"

"You've never seen beauty or hope?" he asked casually. "Never anything good or right?"

Her eyes unfocused a little, and she looked at her drink, swirling it in the glass. "Beauty and hope fade, disappear. Reality takes anything good or right and grinds it down until it's dust."

He looked at her intently a moment, then shook his head. "You don't believe that," he stated. "Not really. If you did, you'd take that gun on your hip and subtract yourself from the equation. No one fights as hard as you do if they don't have _something_ worth fighting for. No one tries to drown their sorrows if they don't _have_ sorrows, and no one has sorrows unless they care about something."

"First a soldier, then a merc, now a philosophy professor," Shepard snorted, then added sarcastically, "Is there anything you _can't_ do, Mr. Conroy?"

"Well, let me think. I make a pretty mean blood pudding, enjoy advanced calculus, I can ski and dance the tango _and_ make you laugh which I suspect is no easy task so…no, I think I've got everything covered."

"Well then," Shepard smirked, picking up her glass and holding it out for a toast. "Fuck you. Fuck you very much."

Conroy tapped her glass with his own and grinned. "Flirting with me _again_, I see. My irresistibility remains adamant, completely undefeated."


	10. Chapter 10

Author's Note:

Bleh, sorry if this sucks and that it's a little later than normal. I had written a whole scene with a brand new character, then read it over, decided I didn't like it at all, and deleted it. Kind of threw me off my rails a bit. Anyway...here y'are, for what it's worth.

* * *

><p>Shepard had drunk many men under the table before, but she supposed it couldn't really be a point of pride to out-drink a man on cancer meds.<p>

Conroy quit well before she did. She barely remembered him leaving. She herself was approaching a state of intoxication that she hadn't allowed in a very long time. Drunk was one thing. Drunk to the point you could barely walk and risked a total blackout was quite another. Even on shore leave she had never allowed herself to get to that point.

It was, however, serving its purpose. A bit more and she wouldn't be feeling any pain. Wouldn't be feeling anything at _all_ and that was a fucking happy thought if ever she'd had one.

It was at some point on the wee small hours of the night (not that the time made any difference to the patronage of the dive, Omega never truly going to sleep) she went up to the bar and asked for a water.

Just as the glass sat down in front of her someone moved up close to her side. She didn't notice at first, the crowd enough to make elbow room a little hard to come by anyway.

"There you are, Gorgeous," a voice murmured in her ear, running on a wash of breath that smelled like old lemons.

"Fuck off," she replied without so much as glancing over, draining half her water in one go. Then she paused, her dark eyes shifting as she slowly lowered the glass to the bar-top. Something unmistakable was pressing into her ribs.

_Great, Shepard, just great. You just had to get totally fit-shaced, didn't you? Now you're going to get shot in a bar on Omega by some two-bit pocket-jack like a total fucking idiot._

"Yeah, you know what _that_ is," Lemon Breath murmured. She felt his hand slide around her waist, unsnapping and then removing her pistol, drawing it out of the holster.

Smirking, Shepard chuckled and took another drink of water.

"What's so funny?" Lemon Breath wanted to know.

"I just think it's cute," she replied, setting the cup down again before looking at him for the first time. She was smiling, flushed with drink, but her eyes were deadly venom. "You actually think I'm going to need my _pistol _to kill you."

"Oh, is that so, Gorgeous? How about we take a little walk first, and you can kill me somewhere a bit more private, dong ma?"

Shepard narrowed her eyes at him slightly. He was a human, probably in his early thirties but grizzled enough despite it. He was, however, most certainly _not _Chinese by any outward appearance. His clothes were worn, dirty, pieced together, and he had a red, twisted cotton bracelet around his left wrist.

"Shi a, _chun_" she replied slowly, with a surprisingly languid lopsided grin. Taking her roughly by the arm he guided her toward the door, the pistol never moving from her ribcage. Shepard allowed herself to be steered.

"So, how old _are_ you, chun?" she asked as they maneuvered through the crowd. "Just an initiate? You realize I earned my sleeve by age twelve. You must be a serious fucking retard."

"Shut the fuck up and walk," he grumped back.

They got out of the small club, and she was completely unsurprised when he steered her away from common areas and instead took a small side route. In only a few minutes, they were in a narrow back alley lined with pipes. Shepard's eyes slid over the pipes and the occasional, grungy and usually broken extranet console they passed, before the path widened. When it did, her gaze shifted to the three men standing there in wait.

Two she didn't know, but she didn't have to. They were little more than boys, also wearing red bracelets on their wrists. The third, who was wearing a coat that had one missing sleeve with the other painted bright crimson, earned her threatening grin.

"Well, hello _Finch_," she greeted.

"It _is_ her," Finch blinked. "Holy fuck…_that's_ a surprise. The fuck, Shepard? You're supposed to be dead."

"Well, I'm not," she answered. "Can't say the same for the rest of you."

Finch's expression changed from surprise to stony confidence, and he stepped closer. "Really?" he asked. "You're looking a little scrawny, _Shep_. And you're not a Spectre any more, not a marine. It's just you and me and my boys."

"Only you would think _any_ of that matters," she retorted.

With a snort, Finch looked at the man standing with his pistol in her ribs and asked, "You get her weapons?"

"Yeah, took her pistol off her," he answered.

"Fuckwit forgot the knife in my boot," Shepard stated, folding her arms. "No wonder he's just a fucking initiate. You might want to get it, Finch, before I open new smiles on the lot of you."

Finch looked at the knife handle sticking quite obviously out of her boot, then shifted his gaze to Lemon Breath. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me? You didn't bother to frisk her?"

Shepard shifted her weight a little, lifting her armed boot meaningfully off the ground, giving it a bit of a wiggle. Finch snorted, switching to Chinese.

"_Yeah right. I bend to get that knife and you kick me in the fucking face. Jeter, you forgot to grab it, __**you**__ get it."_

Lemon Breath…Jeter…scowled and dug his pistol even harder into Shepard's side, bending over and drawing the knife from her boot. He tossed it over to Finch, who caught it and looked it over.

"_Kind of a simple blade," _he commented, still speaking in Chinese. Shepard answered him in the same language.

"_Military issue."_

"_I'd want a bigger one myself, something double edged, maybe ivory handled."_

"_Yes, well, unlike you…I have nothing to compensate for."_

"_You fucking ugly-ass bitch-" _

"That's enough, Finch."

A fifth figure was moving down the small alleyway toward them. Shepard did not need to wait for the light to fall on his face to know who it was.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up, Sperry," she said. "This wouldn't have been any fun without you. My, you are looking a bit…_ugly_."

The head of the Tenth Street Reds was glaring as he reached them. The last time she'd seen him, his features had been slightly more…symmetrical. Now it looked as if a great big fist had half-collapsed the left side of his skull. In truth, it had only been one rather average sized fist…thrown repeatedly and with great enthusiasm.

"I had to drink out of a goddamn straw for six months because of you," he spat. "I lost the sight in my left eye."

"Yeah, I was there, remember?" Shepard smiled dangerously. "When we had our little chat about Paul? When I left you laying in your own blood and piss-"

His fist lashed out, driving into her gut with molten hot force. Shepard barked as the air was forced from her lungs, folding and slumping to the ground.

She heard Finch laugh as she painfully tried to loosen her diaphragm, get it to work again. She felt more than heard Sperry step closer, his voice snide and triumphant.

"And now it's your turn," he told her. She heard the rustle of cloth, the faint displacement of air, and turned slightly to take the brunt of the kick on her hip rather than her gut. Snaking her arm around his calf as his foot connected she whipped him off balance, sent him crashing back to the ground. Using the motion to her advantage she had slipped his boot completely off his foot, and rolled.

A bullet spanked the cement where she'd been laying. She was on her feet a second later, swinging the boot around hard by the laces. It smashed into Jeter's face just as he was lining up another shot.

As he stumbled back she pulled off her hat and flung it into Finch's face as he drew his own weapon. As he startled she stepped up, tearing the pistol from his fingers and then sending him slamming to the ground with a foot in his gut. Kicking Jeter's pistol away as the man rolled, cradling his broken nose, she crouched and grabbed a handful of his hair.

"Told you I didn't need my gun," she growled, then slammed his face forward into the concrete as hard as she could. As he went limp she pulled her pistol from his belt and turned.

The other two Reds, the two she hadn't recognized, were just standing and gaping at her. Sperry was moving weakly, having been knocked half-silly when the back of his skull had hit the ground, and Finch was cradling his gut, making sounds like he was going to vomit.

Pointing the gun at the two still on their feet she said, "This is the part where you run away."

The two boys exchanged looks…and then with a wisdom their elders clearly didn't share, bolted.

Finch groaned, and she heard the rasp of his weapon over the ground as he weakly took hold of it. Barely glancing at him she put one round in his throat, the other between his eyes.

Straddling Sperry, she sat on his stomach and dug the barrel of her gun under his chin. Noticing he was still somewhat cross-eyed she slapped him. "Tune in. I don't want you to miss this," she ordered.

"Fucking bitch," he spat, nostrils flaring.

"You must be the stupidest motherfucker ever born," Shepard growled. "That was the easiest sucker punch I ever baited."

"What?" he blinked.

"I _let you hit me_, you stupid bastard," she said slowly, as if explaining it to a child. "Got me away from Jeter's gun in my back. I'd rather take a punch to the diaphragm than a bullet to the kidney any day. By the way…you hit like a _pussy_."

"Fuck you! You belong to _me_," Sperry fumed. "I _own_ the fucking Reds. And _you're_ a Red."

"Not in your wildest goddamn dreams," Shepard snorted, then looked around a little. "Expanding, are we? Moving operations off-world? Omega is a bit ambitious for you, don't you think?"

"I will take the Reds to every corner of the galaxy," he retorted. "And I will fucking _break_ you, Shepard!"

"Yeah, you've been doing a _fantastic_ job so far. I could have killed you back in New York, Sperry-"

"But you _didn't_," he huffed, a feral grin spreading on his dented face. "What about _now_, Shep? Why don't you pull that trigger and fucking kill me now?"

"Because unlike you, _fuckwit_, I don't kill unarmed men puling like a cocksucking little infant on the ground, _that's why_."

"Bullshit. I was armed back in New York. I grabbed my gun, remember? Don't act like you're so fucking high and mighty, like you're all _ethical_. You're _nothing_, Shepard. You were nothing when I pulled you out of that vent and you're _still_ nothing. Go on! Pull the trigger!"

Shepard's dark brown eyes narrowed only ever so slightly, before she drew the gun away from his chin and got to her feet, stepping away from him. Looking around she spotted her hat and walked over, picking it up.

"I _knew_ you didn't have the fucking balls!" Sperry laughed. "You're a stupid, spineless piece of _shit!_ Always were!"

Ignoring him, Shepard slapped a hand over the hat, dusting it off before she lifted it and set it back on her head. As she did so, she heard the faint rasp of a gun being picked up off the floor.

"What about now_, Shepard_?" he spat disdainfully. "Goody fucking two-shoes, I'm armed _now_, Shepard!"

Turning Shepard fired her pistol once. The shot slapped into his forehead, the back of his head spitting out a wad of brain, blood, and bone. He collapsed.

Spinning her pistol in her hand, Shepard dropped it into the holster on her hip. "And now you're _dead,_ fucker," she stated casually.

* * *

><p>The door to the Crow's Nest was not locked, and opened easily as Kelly Chambers approached it. Crossing the small office area, she moved down the steps and over toward the bed.<p>

Shepard had come in sometime after 0300 station time, according to the log. She had, apparently, only bothered to remove her boots. Sprawled face-down over the covers she still wore her jacket, her holster. Her hat was tumbled carelessly to the floor.

Stopping at the bedside, a small data pad in hand, Kelly inclined her head a little.

"Commander Shepard?"

A hand snapped out from beneath one pillow, aiming the machine pistol directly at the yeoman's face. Shepard squinted with grim, half-asleep irritation.

"The safety is on, ma'am," Kelly noted.

Shepard's hand and head dropped back to the bed and she mumbled something unintelligible into the pillow.

"I have the morning's reports, ma'am," Kelly told her. "And we have information on the location of Dr. Mordin Solus."

Shepard's hand wearily flapped in a vague direction as she mumbled again. Chambers nodded, setting the data pad on the bedside stand before she turned and headed across the room to the small bathroom. Fetching an analgesic from the medical kit on the wall, she filled a cup with some water and returned.

Shepard had managed to shift into something somewhat resembling a sit, and peered at Chambers suspiciously as she held out the medication and water.

"It'll help your head," Kelly offered. Plucking up the pills, Shepard tossed them in her mouth, then downed them with a swallow from the glass.

"You're not really a yeoman, are you Chambers," she muttered.

"On the contrary, I _am_ really a yeoman," Kelly answered, sitting on the edge of the bed. "But that is not my only duty aboard the ship. Due to the fact that we are pursuing the Collectors and may, in fact, have to enter the unmapped Omega Four relay to complete our mission indicates that, even should things go well, there is a low probability of our survival. I have a degree in psychology, and it is my _unofficial_ duty to keep a finger on the pulse of the crew, monitor their mood and stress levels and help to address any mental health issues that may arise."

Shepard snorted a laugh, one without mirth, and looked askance at the other woman. "You're going to have a fucking field day with _me_, aren't you?"

"I am not here to force anything upon you Commander, but it is true. No other sentient being in the galaxy can claim to have been through anything close to what you have experienced. Your childhood and marine services aside, death is not something that people recover from every day. That brings its own unique set of difficulties…difficulties you are only beginning to comprehend, if last night is any indication."

Shepard glowered, getting to her feet and peeling off her jacket. "I think I comprehend them just fine."

"Intellectually, yes, but the emotional toll is not predictable, not even by you, Commander."

"Stop that. If you're gonna head shrink me, call me Shepard."

"As you wish. I have read your files almost as extensively as Operative Lawson. Even before meeting you I could claim to 'know' you very well, Shepard. Miranda even more so. After her study she probably 'knows' you better than anyone else in the galaxy, even yourself."

"Not everyone," Shepard said sternly, glaring at her. Kelly inclined her head with commiseration.

"Granted. Dr. T'Soni holds that title, I understand. The point I was trying to make is that a person cannot be summed up so easily. Reactions are fluid, not always predictable and never based on just what you _know_ about someone, not even yourself. When EDI reported that your weapon had been discharged in your quarters last night, despite all she knew about you, Operative Lawson made the exact wrong conclusion."

"Did she?"

"Yes," Kelly told her. "I saw her face the moment EDI made that report. Her immediate assumption was that the weapons discharge was an attempt at suicide."

"I gather you didn't think that?" Shepard asked, putting her pistol away and slinging the holster back over the partition with its mate.

"No," Kelly told her. "After all you had been through, all you have fought against, and for…all you have _survived_, you taking a gun and ending your own existence is not a fate I would ever ascribe to you. If you were so despairing as to be suicidal, I suspect you would commit such an act by throwing yourself into a desperate situation…charged into a gunfight without your hard-suit, perhaps, or taken a similarly careless, even foolish risk. But it would be in battle, at another's hands."

"Yeah, well…I'm not a coward."

"Suicide is not cowardice, Shepard," Kelly told her calmly. "It is desperation. Often it is mistaken as fear, but in truth it takes more courage than most people will ever know to take an action that will result in the end of one's life. For most people death is the greatest fear of all, and to face that fear is anything but cowardly."

Seeing the look on the commander's face, the woman's thoughts far away and on unpleasant things, Kelly got to her feet. "I will leave you alone to change and read the reports. Dr. Chakwas had high hopes Garrus would be awake this morning, if you'd like to go down to the infirmary and see your friend. I will bother you no further. I just wanted to let you know that I am here to listen, if you have need of me. No one will ever know what it is you are feeling, Shepard…not exactly. But…I am here."

Shepard bobbed her head once, but said nothing, simply listening as Chambers left the room.

_Was that what I was doing last night? Indirect suicide? Drinking myself into a stupor, leaving myself so open? Is it courage to face death again when you've already beaten it once, or is it just foolishness?_

* * *

><p>When the lift opened on the mess Shepard spotted Jacob sitting having some coffee and a plate of what looked like rubber eggs coated in tar. As he looked up and spotted her, he rose and saluted.<p>

"At ease," she told him as she walked over. "I'm just here for some coffee and to see Garrus. Finish enjoying your meal."

"I…wouldn't say I was enjoying it," Jacob replied. From behind the mess counter, somewhere in the clouds of steam and smoke, a voice burst out indignantly.

"I heard that!"

As Shepard picked up the coffee pot and a clean mug a form coalesced out of the miasma, and a plate of the same tarry eggs slid up on the counter in front of her.

"Good morning, Commander," the cook smiled. "I have the best plate just for you."

She lifted a brow, blinking down at the congealed mess. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Rupert, ma'am," he replied.

"Well, Rupert…I'm used to peeling the plastic off of the trays of cardboard and sawdust the Alliance call MREs when I want to eat. And…from the looks of it, I should stick with what I know."

He grunted with a frown, then jerked his chin at the carafe in her hand. "Yeah well, have it your way. More for me. The coffee is somewhat decent anyway. Take all you want."

Filling her mug, she turned back toward the mess, then blinked.

Garrus was standing there, just past the door of the infirmary. One side o f his face was a riot of bandages and nasty looking, still healing pits and cuts. Shepard didn't know if it was possible for a turian to look pale but somehow he did.

"Garrus! For fuck's sake," she blurted. Striding over, she set her coffee down on Jacob's table as she passed it, going to the turian's side. "Come sit down. Did Chakwas clear you?"

"I didn't think he'd be up yet," Jacob commented. "Tough son of a bitch."

"Yeah, I'm cleared," Garrus replied, moving over to sit down as Shepard's urging. "I know better. I saw the dressing down you gave to Williams when she tried to get back on duty without the doc saying it was alright. I didn't need the skin peeled from the _other _side of my face, thank you."

As he sat he gingerly probed the bandages with a grimace. "How do I look? She wouldn't give me a mirror."

Shepard picked up her coffee, straddling her chair as she smirked at him. "Like the wrong end of a krogan asshole," she stated. "So…pretty much exactly as always."

"There's a _right_ end of a krogan asshole?" Garrus asked with a weak chuckle, then touched his face again. "Oh, don't make me laugh. I feel my entire mandible is going to fall off."

Shepard grinned, then gestured at Jacob. "I know you two kind of met but it wasn't under exactly ideal circumstances. Garrus, this is Jacob Taylor. Taylor, this is Garrus Vakarian, the most stubborn turian the galaxy ever shit out."

"_That _was a compliment," Garrus told Jacob. "Just wait until you hear her insults."

"I've seen them land on a few people so far. I just try and stay out of the line of fire."

"Wise man. So, Shepard…I should have known something as minor as death couldn't keep you down for long. What disastrous mess are you dragging me into this time?"

"Not dragging you anywhere unless you agree to be dragged," Shepard told him, sipping her coffee. "Human colonies are disappearing. Thousands of people, gone. They're being taken by the Collectors."

"The Collectors? I thought they only traded now and again on small scale. Why would they be taking whole colonies?"

"That's what we're going to find out, and we're going to shove their heads so far up their asses they can kiss their own tongues." She took a sip of the coffee, shaking her head. "There might be a connection between the Collector attacks and the Reapers. Chances are, Garrus, this trail is going to lead us into the Omega Four relay. If we go in there we likely won't ever come back out. No one ever has. But these fuckers took the only family I have left and I intend to go diving into the mouth of the beast with guns blazing to get her back, if that's what it takes. I need to know you're up for that."

He looked at her seriously a moment. "I thought you said they were taking human colonies."

"They are."

"What was Liara doing on a human colony?" Garrus asked. Shepard blinked at him, then shook her head, her face grim.

"I wasn't talking about Liara. I was talking about Nancy."

"Oh. I don't…oh, yes, that was the woman that took you in before you joined the marines. I'm sorry, Commander, when you said they took your only family I just naturally thought-"

"Yeah, it's all right. You in or not?"

Sensing he'd touched on a tender subject but unsure what it was, he glanced at the human man across the table, then nodded. "Of course I'm in, Shepard."

"Good. Well, you rest up. You still got healing to do. We have another recruit we need to go pick up but this morning's report says he's in a quarantine zone…some kind of plague that infects everyone but humans so, I won't be bringing you along. You just get rested and make yourself at home. Jacob, I want to see you up in the CIC in twenty minutes. Let Miranda know too."

"Yes, ma'am," Jacob replied, the two men watching as she rose and strode away.

"Ok, I missed something," Garrus said to Jacob once she'd gone. "The moment I said Liara's name it was like she turned to stone."

"Shepard isn't taking that well," Jacob told him. "We're not exactly…_sure_…where Dr. T'Soni is. She's apparently working for the Shadow Broker and we can't find any way to contact her. But it seems she knows where _Shepard_ is. We got a few packages last night that Shepard is positive came from T'Soni, but no note, and she didn't come herself."

"Oh," Garrus straightened a little, eyes troubled. "I see. That's…odd though. I would think that Liara would be here in a heartbeat if she even suspected Shepard were alive."

Jacob shrugged. "Two years…people change," he said. "I'm sure she's got her reasons, whatever they are. Truth be told I wish she'd just show up long enough for them to resolve this mess in person. The Commander died. She lost everything. She deserves the chance to at least have real closure to this."

* * *

><p>The smell of death, of sickness, of decay floated with every shift of air, clogging each corner. Shepard pulled off her helmet, the stench filling her nostrils as she looked sadly at the tableau spread before her.<p>

So much misery, clustered tightly together in the only safe place for blocks, the only bastion of hope they had. Turian, salarian,and batarian, a pair of drell, a small cluster of ash-colored asari…all exhausted, withered, sick.

A tiny handful of doctors, mostly human, were busy trying to tend the ill as best they could, while a pair of heavy mechs guarded the door against the roving gangs trying to take advantage of the situation. Vorcha were rampant, almost as thick as fleas. Shepard had lost count of how many she'd shot just to get this far.

"If you're here to cause trouble then get right back out again," a weary looking man told her sternly, drawing her attention away from the suffering. "You'll only get one warning. The right word to those mechs and they'll turn you into so much ground chuck."

"We're here to help," Shepard replied. "We're looking for Dr. Solus."

"He's in the back room." The man indicated the door. "Keep in mind, the last group to bluff their way in to try and put a bullet in him ended up dead. The doctor doesn't play around."

"Noted," Shepard replied, and began to wend her way through the cluster of patients toward the far door.

"I like you hair," a meek little voice suddenly spoke out. Pausing, she looked around to see a listless turian man sitting with a boy on his lap. The child was small, the size of a five or six year old human. His tiny green eyes were fever bright but aware as they focused on her.

"Shh, Tivel," the child's father murmured, tenderly stroking the boy's head. "Just rest, don't bother them."

Glancing at Miranda, Shepard moved over and then crouched down, smiling gently at the little turian. "Tivel, is that your name?" she asked.

As the boy nodded weakly, the father looked at her. "Please, we don't want any trouble. He's just…got this fascination, with hair on other species."

"It's all right," Shepard told him. She'd tied her hair back again, still having not gotten it cut, but most of it had slipped out of the tie. Reaching back she removed the band and let her hair fall loose, leaning a little closer. When the boy's hand reached out tentatively she smiled and nodded.

"Go ahead, its ok," she urged. Tiny clawed fingers slid into the ebony locks, feeling the soft silk…a sensation so foreign to a species with only scales and rough flesh, especially one so young as this. His fevered eyes lit up with fascination as he carefully stroked her hair, leaning forward a little out of his father's arms to better touch it. After a moment he smiled, shyly removing his hand.

"Papa and I is sick," he whispered, as if sharing a secret. "The doctah make us better. Ah you a doctah? Ah you gonna help?"

"Yes, Tivel," Shepard murmured back to him, reaching out and touching his tiny little face. "I'm not a doctor but yes, I'm going to help. I promise."

The little boy abruptly sat forward, pressing his lips and small little mandibles against the tip of Shepard's nose in a completely unabashed kiss. As she blinked at him he settled back against his father and smiled. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Shepard said, barely able to get the words out. Straightening she pulled her hair back again, fastening it with the tie before picking up her helmet. Giving the child a wink she turned and continued on her way.

* * *

><p>Dr. Solus was a salarian. Shepard had known that much from his dossier. It even had a photo of him, so seeing him standing there working intently on some samples brought instant recognition. What the dossier couldn't prepare her for, however, was interacting with the man in person…a sensation she likened to being smacked repeatedly with a child's play mallet…not enough to hurt, but enough to annoy very quickly.<p>

She only got out his name before that play mallet descended, assaulting her with an intent and dizzying cavalcade of words.

"Dr. Solus?"

"What? Who? Sick? No, human. Doesn't affect humans. Doctors then? No, would not be armed and armored if doctors, though suppose might be possible with the vorcha. Blue Suns? No, wrong armor. Blood Pack? No, same. Not mercs, weapons and armor military, corporation with vast budget, not cheap-"

This was spouted off at roughly the speed of light, and for a second Shepard could only blink and stare at the man.

As he continued on making his guesses, seeming only to _increase_ his speed, she snapped. Striding forward a pace she scowled, barking loudly to interrupt him.

"Jesus fucking Christ will you take a _breath_ and…use a fucking _pronoun_? I'll tell you who we are if you give me a fucking _second_!"

The man fell silent, blinking at her. Once she was sure he wasn't going to go spouting off again she nodded. "That's better. My name is Shepard. We're here to recruit you for a mission but I can see you've got your hands rather full at the moment. What can we do to help?"

"You can cure plague, of course," Solus replied with a smile. "You can save lives."


	11. Chapter 11

"Have cure, accomplished last night. Been giving it in single doses, time consuming, too slow. Would work with airborne administration but problem; environmental controls down, air circulation down, cut by vorcha or gangs an hour ago. Most efficient way to spread cure but also, sector is sealed, cannot survive without air circulation. Twelve hours, entire district suffocates."

Solus had only seemed to slow down moderately. Shepard was thinking about that boy out there, Tivel…and dozens of others like him as her eyes roamed about the lab. When they fixed back on him, he was looking at her intently. His gaze was calculating, measuring. It was the gaze of someone with a great amount of intelligence but also someone who knew how to do what had to be done. There were facts, and there were facts, and nothing ever changed them.

"You are a soldier, well-armed, made it this far," he continued, and held out a sealed bottle holding half a liter of a cloudy looking liquid. "Enough cure here for entire district, entire station. If put directly into air circulation, if fans restarted…everyone gets better."

"Right," Shepard replied, taking the bottle and passing it back to Miranda. "We'll get it done. When we get back, you and I are going to talk about the Collectors."

He blinked once, so rapidly she almost missed it. "Collectors? Yes! Not coincidence. Can't be coincidence."

"What isn't coincidence?"

"Plague manufactured, released. Only species not affected: human and vorcha. Vorcha do not have technology to manufacture plague, but suspect vorcha are distributing, not humans. Collectors have technology to manufacture as well. Collectors may have created plague, using vorcha as couriers."

"Why would the Collectors create a plague and release it on Omega?" Jacob asked.

"Why would they kidnap human colonies?" Shepard asked him. "I think Dr. Solus is right, I think this is linked. The vorcha are immune because the Collectors needed someone to spread the virus and they'd be no use in that capacity if they were at risk of dying themselves. Humans are immune because the Collectors want humans alive so they can sweep in and take them. I think this plague is a test run, to see if their virus, their distribution method, was successful."

"Even if that's true, why Omega?"

"Because nobody would care," Miranda answered, shaking her head. "Most of the galaxy would stand up and applaud if everyone on Omega either died or disappeared. And if it was successful, the Collectors could then sow their virus in a dozen different stations or cities across the galaxy before anyone knew what was going on."

"So what's to stop them from doing that even if we stop what's happening here on Omega?"

"No, not efficient," Mordin replied. "Plague cure developed, easily synthesized, no further risk. Collectors will abandon project as failure, turn to other means."

"What other means?" Miranda wanted to know. Mordin shrugged.

"Unknown. Impossible to speculate without knowing Collector motivation, thought processes, agenda."

"Doesn't matter right now, we're wasting time. People are dying," Shepard ordered. "We're moving out."

"Yes, must hurry. One more thing," Solus blinked again when Shepard glared at him in irritation. "My assistant, Daniel, took vials of cure before you arrived. Told him to wait, didn't listen, was going to fix environmental controls himself. Clearly did not make it. If you find him-"

Shepard nodded her understanding, but said nothing as she turned and strode back toward the clinic. Wading carefully through the throngs of sick and dying, they soon found themselves back on the deserted streets.

"This whole mess just gets stranger and stranger," Jacob shook his head as they walked, Shepard fastening her helmet down once again, checking her rifle. "What the Collectors are doing is unfathomable. Why are they so obsessed with humans, to the point they'll create a sickness to kill everyone else just to get to them?"

"I have a theory, but we can discuss that later," Miranda replied. "Right now we have to concentrate on getting that cure in and those fans on before anyone else dies."

"Minds on recreation," Shepard murmured, and Jacob blinked at her.

"What?"

"It means keep your head in the game," she replied. "Liara used to…never mind. Just keep moving."

In order to reach the environmental systems they had to cross two more small district neighborhoods. Since nearing the clinic they had seen fewer and fewer of the gangs but more and more vorcha. Shepard hated to think ill of any creature simply for its race, but even she couldn't help but hate the little bastards.

Barely more than that final primeval step between animal and sentient creature, vorcha had not even developed traditional flight, let alone space travel. Socially developed to an early Bronze Age level, vorcha had first ventured off their own world by stowing away in the vents and cargo holds of other space-faring races. They had since spread like wildfire, instinctively seeking out the slums, the dark corners, the dangerous places. Smart enough to use weapons and technology but not smart enough to develop any on their own, vorcha lived like parasites, and were often used as shotgun-fodder by gangs and merc groups, easily bribing them with food and guns and then sending them off as sacrificial infantry to keep the more important, more trained soldiers out of harm's way.

They had not evolved as a species for millennia, each vorcha capable of a small amount of individual 'evolution', their bodies adjusting to whatever environment they are most exposed to. A vorcha in a constant high gravity locale will grow denser muscle fibers, where another in a low oxygen environment will grow more fine capillaries and wider vessels in the brain. As such they were able to survive almost anywhere and were tough fuckers to kill.

By the time they reached the second residential area, Shepard was so full up of snarling laughs and bright grinning teeth that she wanted to spit.

_Fucking rats, all of them, _she thought as they finally finished taking down another wave of particularly tenacious vorcha. _Goddamn fucking ra-_

A sound, faint but clear, moved through the air, making her pause. She strained to listen, and when it repeated she pulled off her helmet, trying to focus on it.

"Shepard?" Miranda asked, only to halt when the Commander held up two fingers.

The sound was gone again. "Did you hear that?" Shepard asked.

Both Miranda and Jacob concentrated, listening a moment, before Jacob shook his head. "I don't hear anything."

Just at that moment, the noise repeated. "_That_," Shepard urged. "You had to have heard that."

"Shepard, we can't hear anything," Jacob said, baffled as he exchanged a look with Miranda.

"Shepard, it's your senses. They're still going through periods of hypersensitivity thanks to the experimental growth procedures on your brain. We can't hear it like you can."

The sound, fainter, echoed one more time, allowing her to pinpoint a direction, and she strode past Jacob toward a doorway leading into an apartment block. "Here. It's in here."

Carefully the three moved forward, weapons ready. It wasn't long before they heard voices, and edged toward an open door. Gesturing at the other two silently as she flanked the doorway, Shepard risked a quick glance within.

A human man, surrounded by armed batarians. He was wearing a lab coat, and even in her brief glance, Shepard knew exactly who he was.

Looking at Jacob Shepard held up four fingers, then pointed toward the right, indicating the number and position of the assailants. He nodded grimly. Closing her eyes a moment, fixing her motions in her mind, Shepard then smoothly rose and stepped into the room, her gun-site fixed on the head of the first batarian, the one holding his weapon on the human.

"Don't move," she ordered.

All four of the aliens looked at her in fevered surprise. Seeing Jacob and Miranda, the former also with gun raised, the latter blue with biotics, the last three wisely did not reach for their weapons…but neither did their leader lower his.

"Please, no one needs to get shot," the human said frantically. "We can just all talk this over-"

"Get out of here," the lead batarian growled at Shepard, never taking his eyes off the doctor. "We know what he's up to, and we won't let him do it."

"Just calm down," Shepard ordered. "This doesn't need to turn into a mess."

"It's already a fucking mess!" The batarian spat. "People dying, Aria locking us in this quarter to die, gangs roaming around, looting homes, killing people…and now what do we find but the very man spreading the goddamn plague!"

"I'm not spreading the plague!" the doctor said frantically. "I'm here to help…those bottles in my bag, that's the _cure!_"

"You expect me to believe that?"

The batarian kicked aside a small bag on the ground, taking a step menacingly toward the terrified medic.

"Hey, _hey_!" Shepard lowered her gun a little, holding her free hand out toward him in a universal 'wait' signal. "If he's spreading the virus I'll shoot him my goddamn self."

"What?" the word came from three different quarters…in surprise from Miranda, in suspicion from the batarian, and in terror from the medic.

"Just _listen_ to me," Shepard urged. "Tell me your name."

"My…what?" the batarian's suspicion was now colored with confusion, and for the first time he took his eyes off the medic, blinking at her. She could see how gray he looked, fevered, weak. She lowered her rifle, then nodded.

"Yeah, your name. I'll even tip you mine…its Shepard."

"I'm…Karvak."

"Karvak," Shepard nodded, and completely shipped her rifle. "You don't look like you're feeling well, and your boys here look even worse. Look, I'll make you a deal. He says he has the cure, you all are sick. I say we put it to the test. Let him inject you with a dose."

"_What?"_

"If it's really the plague, you already have it…nothing changes. If it's the cure, you get better. Your boys get treated, we can distribute it among the sector and everyone goes home happy."

He narrowed his eyes at her, but she could see his gun arm lowering. She kept her hands up. Miranda, never having been a marine, would not attribute the same meaning to it as Jacob would, but she would not attack unless Shepard did or gave the order. Jacob's instinct would be to take the batarian out of the equation the moment the hostage wasn't in immediate danger, and by keeping her hands up, Shepard was making it clear to him that's not what she wanted. Had she lowered them, the batarian would have already taken his last breath.

She could see the man was weighing her solution. He was sick, but clearly not stupid. He knew that he and his men stood no chance against the three healthy, armed humans…not in their condition.

"And if it _is_ the plague? If he injects me and I don't get better?"

"Then you can shoot me right in the fucking head," she said. Reaching up she pulled off her helmet, dropping it to the side, before she unshipped and dropped all her weapons as well.

"What are you doing?" Miranda hissed, alarmed. Shepard cut a hand toward her sternly, a clear indication to shut up.

Moving over she stepped carefully in front of the medic, the batarian stiffening his arm again, his gun now pointed at her face. Shepard lifted a brow, then took a slow step forward, hands out to her sides, making no quick motions. Without hesitation, she moved until the barrel of his weapon pressed into her forehead, fixing her eyes on his.

"Right. In. The head," she stated carefully.

Karvak's gaze shifted a little, the tension in the room palpable, before he canted his head a bit. "Nuka, bring your gun."

One of the others moved forward, pulling his side arm and going over to Karvak's side. Jerking his chin at Shepard, Karvak then lowered his weapon as Nuka's pressed against her temple.

"She moves, or this doesn't make me well, pull that trigger," he ordered.

Shepard remained still, watching solemnly as the medic crouched and shakily reached for his bag. Drawing out an ampoule of the same foggy fluid that Mordin had given them, the prepared a dose. "It's…it's fairly fast acting. You won't get completely well immediately but you should feel markedly better within a few minutes."

"I'd better, or she dies and then _you_ do," Karvak warned.

Daniel was notably nervous as he finished preparing the dose, offering up the ampoule attached to a small mask. "You…h-have to inhale it," he said. "Push the end there, and then take three deep breaths."

Watching the medic closely, Karvak placed the mask over his nose and mouth, then pressed the ampoule. Instantly the mask fogged as the liquid evaporated. Shepard watched as the batarian took three deep breaths as instructed, then lowered the mask.

Daniel accepted it back before running his forearm over his damp brow, watching intently. The batarian coughed a little, sniffled once, and then took a deep breath. A few tense moments passed.

"Well?" Nuka asked weakly, gun still held to Shepard's skull. "Karvak, did it work? Do you feel better?"

Karvak took another deep breath, gave a faint cough, then nodded. "Yeah…yeah, I can breathe right for the first time in days, don't feel as dizzy. I…think it worked."

The gun lowered from Shepard's head, Nuka's attention now on the medic. "Can…can I have some of that?"

Shepard smirked, glancing over at Jacob and Miranda as they relaxed their stances. Jacob just looked relieved, but Miranda looked pissed as her biotic aura vanished.

As Daniel prepared another mask, the other sick batarians closing in, eager to feel better, Shepard crouched at his side.

"Th-thank you," he told her. "They wouldn't listen to me. I just wanted to help them."

"Dr. Solus sent us after you. Coming out here on your own was a hell of a foolish thing to do."

"Yeah, I…I realized that when I had a gun shoved in my face," he replied.

"Finish treating these boys and then get your ass back to the clinic. Dr. Solus needs help there. We've got a bottle of the cure and we're heading toward environmental control, so we'll take care of that problem, don't worry."

As he nodded, Karvak looked at her. His color was much improved, and clearly he felt more comfortable. "You got some serious balls, human. Didn't think I'd ever see one of your kind taking a chance like that. Thank you."

"Well, you can repay me if you'll escort Daniel here back to the med clinic once he's done fixing up your friends. Shouldn't run into too much trouble but you've got guns…he doesn't."

"Yeah, I think we can handle that," he agreed.

Straightening, Shepard went over and picked up her guns, reshipping them and then taking her helmet. As soon as the three had stepped back into the hallway Miranda glared.

"That could have gone very badly very quickly, Commander," she said.

"Hey, I'm doing what _you_ brought me back to do. You can't bitch about it now."

"Bringing you back was _pointless_ if you get yourself shot in the head by a delirious batarian," Miranda retorted, then straightened as Shepard started away, heading not for the street but deeper into the building. "Wait, where are you going?"

"That sound I heard? The one that brought us in here in the first place?" Shepard reminded her, then shook her head as she pointed back at the room they'd just left. "Wasn't in there."

Baffled, the Cerberus pair followed her as she mounted the stairs, moving up to the second floor. When they reached the landing, the sound repeated and this time, they heard it as well. It was faint, but unmistakable…the sound of exhaustion, confusion, discomfort, pain, and misery.

Another door stood partially open, and Shepard had her pistol in her hand as she approached it. A limp hand, a smear of dark green blood, were on the floor just within. Scanning the room quickly with her pistol, Shepard eased through the gap, gingerly stepping over the dead salarian man just within.

This was no plague victim. The man had been shot at close range, probably by a group of looters, judging by the mess in the apartment. Furniture had been overturned, items thrown everywhere. Shepard shipped her weapon the moment the place was clear, just as that heart-breaking, plaintive sound moved weakly through the room.

Pinpointing its source, Shepard tore off her helmet, throwing it aside as she crouched and gingerly moved a large bassinette that had been overturned. A knot of blankets and bedclothes greeted her, and she carefully drew them away, baring the infant.

The little girl was asari, probably only a few months old. Her little nostrils were caked with mucus, her breathing a thick, burbling sound. The blue of her skin had gone ashen, a darker blue over her tiny cheeks and forehead, the flush of fever. She looked shrunken in her little pajamas, and as Shepard gingerly touched her, she shifted a bit, snuffling wetly before letting out another weak cry.

"Shh…shhh, it's ok," Shepard whispered, ever so carefully lifting the child. How long she had lain there could not be said. She may have had the plague before the looters broke in, shooting what was probably her father as he innocently answered the door. She may have gotten it later, as she lay beneath the carelessly tossed aside bassinette…where she had probably been peacefully sleeping when those greedy, uncaring bastards had come in.

Shepard trembled with fury at the thought that the looters had thrown the bed aside, sleeping child and all, completely without hesitation or remorse. She had not escaped the overturning unharmed. Even as Shepard cautiously lifted her, she could see the bruises on the child's forehead, the swollen arm that had a peculiar angle.

She had been laying there, alone, for at least a day, probably longer. The child was very ill, hungry and dehydrated, soaked through, hurt. Had she not been found she probably wouldn't have lasted more than another hour or two.

Gently wrapping the baby in one of the blankets, holding her carefully, Shepard straightened and turned, heading for the door.

"My God," Jacob murmured as he caught sight of the little girl, feeling fury rise up in him as well as he reached Shepard's same conclusions.

For the first time, Miranda's cold shell seemed to crack, her blue eyes swimming as she strode along at Shepard's side, forcing the door open a bit more so that the commander didn't have to squeeze to get out.

Daniel, Karvak and the others were still in the room downstairs. The batarians had been treated and all looked much perkier than they had. Daniel was just packing up the rest of the vials in preparation to head back to the clinic when Shepard entered.

His eyes widened when he saw the infant and he instantly rose, striding over and gently easing her from the commander's arms. Seeing the mucus, hearing her breathe, he went back to his bag and crouched, Shepard at his side. Preparing another dose he fit the mask over the little girl's face, the huge contraption nearly covering her from chin to forehead. She moved weakly, crying a little, but after a few more breaths the cries turned far more lusty.

"Her lungs are easing," Daniel said as Shepard sighed in relief. Removing the mask he gently wiped the thick clogging snot from the tiny nostrils, gingerly touched the bruises on her head. "She is still dehydrated, hurt…we have to get her back to the clinic right away. Did you find any parents?"

"Just her father, I think," Shepard said. "Dead. Didn't see any sign of her mother."

"A lot of families were separated in the quarantine. If her mother lives we'll find her."

"She going to make it?" Shepard asked softly. He looked up at her, meeting her eyes seriously.

"I don't know," was the honest response. "She's very young, and very sick. But she has a chance now, and if anyone can help her, it's Dr. Solus."

Reaching out, Shepard gently touched the little girl's cheek. As she did, the baby opened her eyes. Weary, pained, the child's sky blue gaze met Shepard's for just a moment, before they closed again.

Shepard clenched her teeth. "Go, take her. Get her there as fast as you can," she said, clasping Daniel's shoulder before she rose. The child was in his hands now, his and Dr. Solus's. Shepard had her own work to do.

* * *

><p>The asari Matriarch stood in the doorway for a long while, watching the girl within as she spoke to the human woman, Osco.<p>

_He said her name was Eír, claimed her mother human. Buhto should have known better. He never thinks of subtleties. The girl is sixty if she is a day, and if my judgment of human age is correct, this Osco is not yet that old herself. She could not have sired this child...nor could any human have done so. Sixty years ago, they were unknown to the asari, to the galaxy. _

Buhto had told her of the strange little family…the krogan boy, the asari girl, both who called a human woman 'mother'. Both, Buhto had said, incredibly strong both physically and biotically.

Strong, but untempered, untrained, foolish still with youthful bravado. There was a story here…a story that piqued her curiosity. How had this strange little family come into being? How was it that two such powerful children of two separate races called each other brother and sister yet shared no actual bond of blood?

Done with silent observation, Misira stepped into the room, the motion drawing the attention of the pair waiting there.

"Good morning," she greeted with a solemn nod of her head. "I am Matriarch Misira Seko, bond-mate to Dundrin Buhto."

The girl lifted her chin slightly, before inclining her head respectfully. "I am Eír Osco. This is my mother, Gellian."

"I am pleased to meet you both," Misira said politely. "My bond-mate has agreed to train you and your brother…and by extension, I have as well. As you are asari, I and my youngest daughter Shrive will be seeing to most of your instruction, while Buhto concentrates on Thug."

Eír glanced momentarily at Gellian, before she returned her gaze to the Matriarch. "I am honored, Matriarch."

"Misira will do," she replied with a faint smile. "Come. Shrive awaits us in the athenaeum."

"May…mother come as well?" Eír asked. Misira lifted a brow.

"I do not mind if she wishes to observe."

Leading them into the rugged complex, Misira was silent until the girl ventured with a question.

"What is an…athenaeum?" she asked.

"In short, it is a place of learning," Misira explained patiently. "On other worlds an athenaeum would be a library, part of a university or temple. Here…it is my place. Tuchanka is a hard world, Eír, and most of its beauty must be sought for. I built the athenaeum to display this beauty, to provide a refuge of peace and serenity and study, both mental and physical. Most of the krogan think it is silly, a pointless lark, but Buhto and Frek know its true worth. Battle is not always about simply hitting the hardest, charging the fastest or shooting with the biggest gun. Battle can be subtle, graceful, lyrical. It is about strategy, form, guile and wit as much as about brute strength. Even beauty can hide the most deadly opponent, and strength alone will never win a fight."

"That is why mother wanted us to come," Eír said. "We are strong, but we must learn things she cannot teach us."

Misira glanced at Gellian with a somewhat bemused expression. "Then your mother holds wisdom. It is a rare soul who can admit that some things are beyond their ability, that they are not all their children need in the world."

"You mentioned that we were going to meet your youngest daughter," Gellian ventured. "Do you have many children?"

"Four," Misira told her. "Two girls, two boys. My eldest daughter, Fier, is on Thessia with her own bond-mate."

"How is it possible you have sons?" Eír asked. Misira smiled at her.

"They are Buhto's boys, of course. We have been bond-mates since we were both young, but Buhto is a great battle master, heir to the clan of Dundrin. I could not begrudge him continuing his krogan line and strengthening his kind."

They moved down a set of steps and outside, soon passing through an archway and into the courtyard of a small building.

The courtyard was the first green they had seen since arriving on Tuchanka, and Eír felt her heart stop in wonder as she took in the sight. Soft grass carpeted their feet, draping curtains of emerald spilling over walls, blooming with tiny white flowers that looked like foam. Elegant sculptures almost seemed to grow from the very soil, stretching with impossibly delicate swirls, spires and waves. A fountain was part of the far wall, spilling water in a continuous flow into a pond ringed with purple and yellow blooms.

Ivy curtained a wide doorway that led into the building itself, spotted with flowers the same as the growth on the walls. As they headed that direction, an asari girl stepped through those curtains, arms outstretched to allow the draping plants to brush over her, draw along behind her before they finally slipped free and hung still once again.

It was not a dramatic act, not grandiose or put on for show or flattery. It was a simple joyful motion, the unconsciously tender gesture of someone who simply loved the brush of the flowers.

Misira gestured as the girl saw them and approached. She was dressed in a leather hunting coat that was short in front but draped in the back almost to her knees. Her trousers looked like soft, well-worn velvet, a dull brown in color. The girl herself was probably just a century in age, looking only slightly older than Eír. She was a shade or two lighter blue, her eyes a deep color bordering on purple, made more vibrant by the streaks of white face paint she had adorned herself with.

"Shrive, this is Eír and her mother Gellian," Misira introduced, then gestured at the girl. "This is my youngest daughter, Shrive Seko."

"My pleasure," Shrive replied with a polite incline of her head. Gellian returned it with a murmured greeting but all Eír seemed able to do was stare. If Misira or Shrive noticed the girl's rudeness they both ignored it.

"Shrive, Eír will be with us for training. Her brother Thug was just accepted into the clan and Eír is his krant."

"Father mentioned something about that," Shrive nodded, scrutinizing Eír with weighty measure. "He said she was strong, even for an asari."

"Strong, but undisciplined," Gellian agreed, then nudged her daughter. "And incredibly rude."

Eír stiffened, her cheeks heating as she scowled a little. "I am sorry," she murmured. "I am pleased to meet you, Shrive."

Shrive's lips flicked into a smile. "See if you are still pleased after you have been tossed around the yard some," she said. "I will not coddle you as your human mother might."

Eír glared. "Don't speak of mother that way. You will not find it so easy to toss me around the yard as you might think."

"Oh?" Shrive lifted a brow, then looked at Misira. "It seems you were mistaken, Mother. This one does not seem in need of any training. She is already strong and wise enough for anything."

Eír lunged forward, hands wreathed in blue…and suddenly found herself launched back, sailing through the air before she crashed to the grass. Gasping for air, she rolled to her feet, turning toward her attacker.

Misira had drawn Gellian a few steps to the side, both older women watching silently as Shrive strode toward Eír, her own hands lit.

"Never attack a foe in blind anger," Shrive stated. "An angry mind is a clouded and wasteful mind. That is your first lesson."

Eír let out a growl of fury and launched forward again, swinging a biotic slam toward her opponent. Shrive ducked into a crouch, batting the force of the biotic fury away a with a sweep of her hand and sending Eír sailing to the ground again.

"Every attack, no matter how powerful, can be defended if your opponent is clever enough," Shrive said as she straightened, the other girl struggling back up to her feet. "There is always a way to win."

Eír, blind with rage, drew in every ounce of power she could muster. A flare of biotics grew into a shield, into a wall, then into a roaring tempest. With an angry cry she flung it toward Shrive but the girl was no longer there. Enveloping herself in her own biotics, Shrive lifted up off the ground out of the path of the wave, arching elegantly high in the air, her coat flaring around her as her as her legs lifted over her head, toes pointing toward the sky. Completing her arch she landed on her feet behind a stunned Eír, snapping her arm around the girl's shoulders as the blade of a dagger dug lightly under her chin.

Eír was trembling, exhausted, having thrown so much power into that attack that she now could barely breathe. She could do little but stand there, weakly clutching the arm gripping her tightly, panting in impotent fury.

"And sometimes," Shrive whispered in her ear. "It is the smallest tool at your hand that will gain victory. Wars have been won with needles…or daggers."

"Let go of me," Eír grit out. The arm around her loosened, allowing her to drop to her knees. Her whole body was shaking, and she felt her muscles had been set afire.

Shrive stepped back, sheathing her dagger as Gellian and Misira approached. Gellian resisted the urge to rush to the girl's side, knowing such an act would only wound Eír's pride further. Misira looked at her daughter, then almost tenderly at the panting Eír.

"You are young, Eír," she said. "You have much to learn, but there is no shame in this. Loss gives us more power than victory. If you are wise you will never lose the same way again. If you are foolish, you will ignore our teaching and experience, you will turn a deaf ear to what we say, and in the end, you will go into the galaxy and you will fall."

Eír sat back on her heels, a brooding pout on her face before she let out a slow breath and looked up at Misira.

"I am not a fool," she murmured. "I will listen, and learn."

"Good," Misira smiled. "Then you have won."


	12. Chapter 12

Author's Note: Just corrected some typos :D

* * *

><p>Slowly the sound of the gentle surf, the smell of salt air, the warmth of sun began to fade. Tan fingers clasped a little more tightly to the sweep of a blue shoulder as the dim light and metal lines of her quarters once more fully asserted themselves, true reality returning. It was not this shift of landscape that she resisted as much as the painless separation, the slow divide from one back into two as souls gingerly divided once again. It was a slightly disorienting, lonely sensation.<p>

"Shepard," Liara's soft whisper was trembling, breathless, a faint echo of the passionate cry that she had released not moments before.

"It's ok," Shepard murmured back. Trying to catch her own breath, she lightly kissed the asari's forehead, just above her eyebrow. Liara lowered her head, pulling Shepard even closer. The human woman felt the soft press of lips on her shoulder a moment before a light, warm, wet .

"Hey…" Concern filled her voice as she realized the moisture was tears. "Tianlán…"

"I did not think I could feel…" Liara's voice was so faint she could barely make out the words. "I…I am all right. _Better_ than all right…I just…by the Goddess…"

Shepard smiled faintly, fingertips trailing down the back of the asari's neck and shoulders. "Yeah," she teased gently. "You said that a _few_ times…"

Liara giggled a little, snuggling closer with a hum of contentment. After a moment the asari shifted, lightly pressing Shepard's shoulder with her hand. Shepard lay back, smiling up at the scientist as she smiled down at her. Ducking in briefly, Liara gave her a quick kiss, then met her eyes. "I am going to make us some tea."

"Tea?" Shepard smirked with baffled amusement. "Right now?"

"Yes," Liara replied. The room behind her melted away into white marble columns, slants of clouded gray sky beyond pregnant with rain. With it, Liara's face changed, lines of weariness settling in between her eyes which faded from bright sky blue to dull gray fog. Her voice had changed as well, a low monotone as cold as the grave."Tea is traditional for Sendings…"

"Sending…Liara, a Sending is a funer-"

Liara straightened and stepped back a pace from the hard marble block on which Shepard lay. She was dressed in her lab coat, which was oddly bound around the waist by heavy black ropes. As she moved backward, Shepard struggled to sit up.

A badly burned and melted hard-suit encased her like a vice. The congealed lumps of plastic and metal held firm, resisting any attempt to move. She cried out in pain and determination, fighting against it. Great chunks of burned skin peeled off of her body as she tore her way into a sit. Meaty, gray, scorched chunks of her own muscle, lousy with maggots, pattered down to the cool white marble. Yellowed bone cracked and split as she made it to her feet. "Liara, wait!"

Drifts of dead flowers reached to her knees, their aroma the sweet, dry smell of decay. Liara was in the doorway now, beyond her a smooth green lawn and that mournful sky.

"Don't!" Shepard cried after her, struggling to go forward. She tore at her ruined armor. A large chunk of it came free, rending away flesh again with it. Shepard uttered a grit-toothed cry at the sensation of ripping muscle and skin, the raping gouge as her torso was flayed by her own motion.

"Don't leave me!" Shepard screamed after the asari, who was walking away, stepping to the grass and moving further away with every stride. She could see a distant drell across the lawn, waiting patiently for her.

"_Don't leave me_!" Shepard screamed again, then cried out as her struggle to move forward tore her leg free from her knee like an overcooked chicken bone. Congealed blood and a spill of writhing worms slimed the crushed dead flowers as she stumbled, struggling to remain upright. "Don't leave me! Tianlán! I'm not dead! _I'm not dead_!"

As she collapsed forward into the dry brown petals she could feel her body tearing apart, searing as if with flame, being consumed into nothing.

* * *

><p>Shepard's eyes opened as she let out a heavy breath, and for a moment she could only stare up into the dark, disoriented and confused. Her hair was damp, the back of her neck and shoulders uncomfortably warm, her blankets an impossible tangle wound around her.<p>

Reality and memory returned. It was a _dream_. Just that, nothing more.

She glanced over at her clock, which showed it was just after 0400. Untangling herself, she shifted into a sit, wiping her hands over her face. Knowing she would get no more sleep she got up and padded to the bathroom.

In moments she was standing under the spray of her shower, the water hot enough to redden her skin uncomfortably. Even after she finished washing she still stood there, head bowed forward beneath soaked tendrils of hair as thick and heavy as seaweed, eyes closed.

They'd stopped the plague in the lower district. By the time they got back to the clinic people were already showing marked improvements. She'd sought out Daniel before even looking for Solus, and the assistant had brought her to see the baby. Clean, treated, the tiny little girl was in a heated incubator, attached to an IV to help her rehydrate, give her some much needed nutrition until she was strong enough to suckle again.

"I think she's going to make it," Daniel had murmured to her, smiling a little as Shepard watched the rise and fall of the girl's breathing, the dreamy little motions of her mouth and chin.

"Have you found her mother yet?" she asked.

"Not yet, but we will."

"If she's dead, what will happen to the baby?" Shepard wanted to know.

"Next of kin will be located and take custody," he told her. "If none can be found or none wish to accept the responsibility, she'll be sent to an orphanage on Thessia. Chances of that are very small, however. Her father was salarian. Even if no asari relation can be found, he doubtless had a dozen brothers and an even larger extended family. Chances that _all_ of them will not want her are extremely remote."

As she stood in the shower, Shepard thought idly that she'd contact the clinic again before they left, see if her mother hadn't been found, or some willing relative. She wanted to make sure the child was safe.

No one deserved to grow up unwanted.

Finally shutting the shower off she dried and dressed, peering critically into the mirror. The red lines were fewer now, smaller, noticeably fading though they still had quite a ways to go. As well she didn't look as skinny as she had, proper meals and exercise starting to fill her out to something resembling a normal human being. Soon, she hoped, she'd look like a normal _marine_.

As the _Normandy_ was still in dock, and as the hour was so early, the corridors and mess were all but completely deserted. Shepard lingered in the latter only long enough to make herself some coffee, before she took the lift down to the lower levels.

Engineering was quiet, empty. Wandering through she halted at the railing that overlooked the large drive core, which spun slowly and almost sleepily, the engines idle.

Drawing a cigar out of her pocket she lit it and then leaned on the rail, lazily watching the core as she smoked and sipped at her coffee. One may have mistook her expression for one being deep in thought but truth be told, she was trying _not_ to think of anything at all…just for a few moments.

"Hey, who are you? Ye can't smoke en here," A man's voice, more than lightly touched with a Scottish brogue, piped up indignantly behind her.

Shepard straightened, turning around. The man standing there had a data pad in one hand, coffee in his other, doubtlessly going through the first checklist of the day. He had a scowl on his face as he tried to figure out who this civvie was that had somehow snuck on board and into his engine room just to have a smoke and a coffee.

The scowl didn't last long, swiftly changing to surprise as he caught sight of her face. He stiffened, tucking the pad quickly under his arm and saluting.

"Oh…Commander! I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was you."

"At ease," she told him. "Nothing to say sorry for. We haven't met yet, have we?"

"No ma'am. I'm Engineer Kenneth Donnelly. I keep this sweet girl purring."

"_We_ keep her purring," a woman's voice broke in as a second form rounded the corner. "Engineer Gabriella Daniels, ma'am."

"You two do get an early start, don't you?"

"Normally no, but we wanted to do a full maintenance scan and update before we left Omega. Operative Lawson hinted we would likely be departing tomorrow and the entire process takes about twelve hours so, the sooner the better."

"Oh, Lawson did, did she?" Shepard murmured into her coffee.

"Was she mistaken, ma'am?" Donnelly asked. Shepard waved a hand idly before tucking her cigar back in her mouth.

"No, probably not. I just love how I'm the fucking commander around here and yet she gives all the orders."

The pair were awkwardly silent a moment before Daniels cleared her throat. "If you'd like, we can give you a tour, ma'am."

"No, that's all right, thank you. You two been with Cerberus long?"

"Not long," Donnelly said. "To be honest, this was our first mission with the organization."

"Yeah, mine too," Shepard smirked.

The man smiled, an action which seemed to reduce him instantly to twelve years old. "Not te sound like a gushing fan-boy, Commander, but having the chance te work under your command makes me downright giddy. I mean, Torfan alone-"

"Kenneth, you sound like a gushing fan-boy," Daniels interrupted with mild irritation. Looking at Shepard she said, "It's just an honor to work with you, ma'am. Especially on a mission as important at this one."

"Emportant esn't the half of et," Donnelly beamed. "Weth you along, Commander, we're gonna kick the Collectors right en the daddy-bags!"

Shepard lifted her brows, fighting a smirk. Daddy-bags. That was a good one. She'd have to remember it.

"Well, good to know I have your confidence," she told them. She drained the last of her coffee. Her cigar all but spent she tossed the butt into the cup to extinguish it, then dumped them both in the reclamation unit nearby.

"I'll leave you two to your work. I'm sure there's probably something I should be doing as well. It was nice to meet you both."

As she headed for the lift she heard the two start talking, apparently unaware she was still able to hear them.

"I dedn't thenk she'd come down here and talk to us," Donnelly said.

"I told you she would," Daniels replied. "Shepard's a good commander, and good commanders know their crew."

"Aye, I suppose so. It's strange though."

"What's strange?"

"I always thought she'd be taller."

* * *

><p>Miranda sat alone at a table in the mess when Shepard got back upstairs. Rupert was up now, the galley filling with smoke and steam as he started up breakfast.<p>

The Australian was reading a data pad as she sipped at a cup of coffee. Shepard watched her silently a moment before grabbing a second cup, and then striding over, pulling out the chair opposite the operative, turning it around, and straddling it. As she set her coffee down Miranda looked up at her with mute surprise.

"Good morning, Commander," she said. "I was not expecting you to be awake already."

"Neither was I," Shepard replied. "What about you? What stirs you at this ungodly hour, or is this just normal routine?"

"Most of the time. I like to get an early start, and I don't need much sleep," she said.

"A trait Cerberus no doubt admires greatly."

"Of course," Miranda responded. "Cerberus admires any initiative, personal or otherwise, that forwards the cause as a whole."

"Hmm." Shepard responded neutrally, faintly nodding. After a moment of awkward silence, she met her XO's eyes.

"So, give," she said. "Full skinny."

"Full skinny...? I'm afraid I don't-"

"C'mon, Lawson. As everyone keeps telling me, you know pretty much all there is to know about me. I think it's only fair if the favor is returned, don't you? Especially if we have to trust one another?"

"Oh. Well, all right." She set the data pad aside, but it didn't escape Shepard's notice _how_ she did so. She didn't merely set it down casually and ignore it. She set it quite precisely, two fingers nudging it slightly until its edge was lined up perfectly with the edge of the table. The motion was clearly one of habit.

"I suppose one of the most important things you should know about me, I've had extensive genetic modification."

Genetic therapy and modification wasn't entirely unheard of. Usually done in utero to correct some emergent disorder before a child was even born, gene therapy could be simple and relatively inexpensive…or require several repeat treatments and cost an astronomical amount. Williams, for example, had received some gene therapy before she'd been born, to correct a family tendency for near-sightedness. That Miranda felt the need to bring it up…and right out of the gate…suggested this wasn't just something that had been done so she wouldn't have to wear lenses.

"What disease…if it's not too personal?" she asked.

"No disease, Shepard," Miranda replied. "My father wanted…well, for argument's sake, he wanted a tailor-made child, one to his precise specifications. As a result of his choices I heal quickly, will probably live half again as long as the average human. I am highly intelligent, very strong biotically for a human…even my looks were designed to give me an edge."

Shepard cocked one corner of her mouth. "I see your self-esteem, as well, is extremely healthy."

"It's not bragging, I'm merely stating facts," Miranda replied. "To be honest, it's what we have in common. We're both here right now because of genetic engineering, interference in the natural order. The difference is, _you_ were engineered because of who you already were. I am who I am _because_ I was engineered."

Shepard smirked again, snorting a laugh before taking a sip of her coffee. "Bullshit."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're not who you are just because your father hand-picked selections."

"Yes, I _am_ Shepard," Miranda replied. "My intelligence, my talents, my looks…the only thing I can take responsibility for are my mistakes."

"Because you had no hand in your intelligence, your talents, or your looks?" Shepard intoned dryly. "Yeah, welcome to the rest of the goddamn galaxy."

When Miranda blinked at her Shepard shook her head. "You think _I_ picked my looks or my talents? How smart I was? Do you think anyone _anywhere_ ever has? Just like you, we get what's handed to us by our parents. It's all in the genes. I didn't choose my eye color, I have brown eyes because my sperm donor of a father had brown eyes. The only difference is, your father said 'let her have blue eyes' rather than just rely on the random spin of the genetic wheel."

Lifting her cup again she looked into it and mumbled as if speaking to the brew. "All the looks, brains and talent in the universe won't do jack spit if you don't choose to use them."

Miranda sat back in her chair. "It's not so simple as all that. I was made to be perfect, Shepard-"

"And yet you're not. You…consider that a _failure_, don't you? That you're _not_ perfect. Who is it you think you're failing? Your old man?"

"I couldn't care _less_ what he thinks," Miranda spat with surprising venom. Shepard lifted her brows.

"Ok, obvious sore spot. Sorry about that."

"It's…never mind. A subject for another day. I'd rather not talk about him."

"Understood," Shepard nodded. "I won't push then. Change of subject if you want. We can talk shop. Yesterday you mentioned you had a theory about why the Collectors were taking such an interest in humans. Care to share?"

Miranda's glance at the commander was trepidatious. Shepard could see the weighing of heavy thoughts and lifted her chin a little.

"What…what is it you think I won't like?" she prodded.

Miranda touched the data pad again, correcting its perfect measure with the edge of the table another millimeter. "Commander, you must understand this is just a theory. We have no concrete evidence as yet."

"Go on," Shepard ordered. Miranda met her eyes.

"I believe the Collectors are interested in humanity because of you."

Shepard lifted her brows in surprise. "Me?"

"The facts would seem to point that direction. We believe the Collectors are working as agents for the Reapers. They did not change their behavior patterns until a human fleet defeated Sovereign at the Citadel…a fleet there at your command, while _you_ defeated one of Sovereign's top agents. Then, suddenly…almost immediately, the Collectors begin to kidnap only human colonies and try and unleash a plague that kills all but human beings."

She leaned forward a little, placing a fingertip on the table as if pinning down her point. "They attacked the _Normandy_ in what could have been an attempt to get _you_, Shepard. And I don't believe its coincidence that Freedom's Progress was one of the colonies abducted…the colony where lived a woman with direct ties to you. And…"

She drew her hand back, a look of debate on her face once again before she finally inclined her head in surrender. "It was no smooth process to recover your body," she said. "Truth be told we were not the ones that retrieved it from Alchera at all. Agents of the Shadow Broker did."

"The Shadow Broker," Shepard breathed. "But…_why_?"

"For the Collectors," Miranda told her. "Apparently they contacted him and made arrangements to purchase your remains for a great deal of money, information, and technology. The single largest price the Collectors have ever offered for any one of their coveted specimens. The exchange was literally interrupted in progress by our own agents who managed to recover the pod and deliver it to Lazarus station. A few more minutes, Commander, and you would have been in the Collectors' possession and out of our reach."

_For me? All that, all of_ this, _because of me? I'm just a marine, just a soldier. Thousands of humans fought at the Citadel to bring Sovereign down. _

A deeper part of her mind echoed the painful truth. It _was_ because of her. Her actions had drawn the Reapers specific attention. It could not be often that one of their number was taken down and though she hadn't fired the shot that had done it, she was the one that had brought things to a head, that had halted Saren's machinations and led events ultimately to their destructive conclusion.

Which meant this was all her fault. The attack on the _Normandy_, the thousands of missing colonists, Nan, every person who had died of the plague on Omega…all because of _her_.

"_That_ is why I didn't want to tell you, Shepard," Miranda said, knowing full well what Shepard's expression meant. "This was _not_ your fault. You took the only action you could, the _right_ action. You saved billions of lives. Had you not done what you did, _none_ of us would be here now. The Citadel, humanity, _Earth_…_all_ would be gone. And if it is true that you are their motivation, then we can use that to our advantage, stop them from doing anything more."

Logically she knew Miranda was right, but that didn't stop a little part of her soul from aching a bit more, crushing a bit further under the weight of the tragedy her very existence had caused this galaxy.

Wordlessly she fished in her pocket, drawing out another cigar and her lighter. As she tucked it in her mouth, flicking on the flame, Miranda watched her.

"That is a puzzle I haven't figured out just yet," she murmured. Shepard looked up from lighting the cigar, the first puff of smoke filtering out through her lips and nostrils.

"What's that?"

"Well, your smoking," Miranda replied. "You no longer have any addiction to tobacco. Your entire system was rebuilt from its very chemical foundation upward. You should have no more physical desire to smoke than a newborn child. And genetically you have no markers for any kind of oral fixation. Yet you almost immediately went back to the habit. I can only conclude _that_ is the only reason you did…habit. Habits are repetitions that cause distinct neural pathways to develop and we made sure to regenerate your neural pathways exactly-"

"Including my psychosis and neuroses I'd imagine," Shepard agreed, puffing out another cloud. "My smoking is not a physical addiction, never was. Well, no, I'm sure I _was_ addicted to tobacco after how long I was using it but that was a simple side-effect. It's a psychological quirk, one of many and varied. Kind of like your OCD."

"I do not have OCD," Miranda blinked.

Shepard snorted another laugh, plucking the stogie out of her mouth between two fingers. "Yes, you do. I can prove it."

"Well, go on then," Miranda challenged.

Reaching out with her free hand Shepard nudged the top of the data pad until it slanted a little. Not much motion, just a centimeter…just enough to put it at a bit of a cant.

Then she drew her hand back and fixed her eyes on Miranda's.

She could see the almost physical struggle pass over the woman's face a moment before she let out a breath of frustration, reached out, and nudged it back into place.

"You see?" Shepard grinned.

"I just like symmetry," Miranda retorted. Shepard smirked with sarcastic disbelief.

Miranda scowled at her, then slowly began to smile. Shepard grinned back.

* * *

><p>As Shepard stepped into Mordin's clinic the first thing she noticed was how empty it was. Just yesterday there had been wall to wall patients, filling every inch of available space. Now only one or two lingered, and the general air was one of relief instead of pain.<p>

She walked past the mechs who remained at their posts, looking around the small waiting room for someone to ask about the baby, when she suddenly heard her name tentatively spoken.

"Shepard?"

She turned around, and for one startled, heart-wrenching moment, it was Liara standing there, cheeks damp. Her breath literally caught in her throat, the asari's name on the tip of her tongue, before the illusion faded.

It _was_ an asari woman, young and pretty, but it _wasn't_ her Tianlán. The thrill of hope was replaced with an almost molten sink in her gut, a weary freshening of grief. Powerless for a brief second in its grip, she simply stood there when the woman suddenly stepped forward and embraced her with a sob.

"Uh…" she murmured, lifting a tentative hand to lightly pat the asari's back. "Do…I know you?"

"No, I…I'm sorry," the girl sniffled, releasing her and wiping her cheeks. "My name is Vivek Komaravolu. Dr. Solus told me who you were, gave me your name. You are the woman that saved my little Nora…"

Shepard nodded solemnly, understanding. "The baby," she murmured. "I'm glad that I was able to help her. I'm only sorry I didn't get there sooner. How is she?"

"She's going to be just fine thanks to you," Vivek told her, eyes swimming. "When I think of how long she was there, hurt and all alone…and my poor Rylek. Some friends had invited me to go shopping on the upper levels but I hadn't left the house since Nora was born. Rylek was so understanding, so insistent that I go have fun, that he would take care of her. Then the plague…by the time we got back they had locked down the district, wouldn't let any of us in. I begged but they wouldn't listen, I…"

Fresh tears came and she covered her eyes. Reaching out, Shepard gently took her arm, guiding her to a nearby bench to sit down, seating herself beside her.

After a moment, Vivek steadied herself again. "We were only bond-mates for two years," she murmured. "My mother…thought my choice was silly but Rylek was always so sweet, so gentle. And when Nora was born, oh he was so _good_ with her. She had him wrapped about her finger the moment he first held her and now…he will never get to see her grow."

She wiped her eyes again, then looked at Shepard. "Do _you_ have children, Shepard? A mate…er…husband? That is what humans call them, I think…"

"No," Shepard's voice was low and thick. "No children."

"But a love," Vivek insisted, searching her face. "I can see it in your eyes. You have…lost, like I have, haven't you?"

"I…yes, in a way," Shepard replied. "Death separated us too."

Vivek reached out and grasped Shepard's hand, squeezing it. "Then you understand," she murmured. "And you understand what a gift that you gave me, in saving my little girl. I can…I can never repay you for her. No words of gratitude will ever be sufficient."

"Just…let me know how she's doing, from time to time," Shepard said. "A reminder now and again would be nice."

"A reminder? Of such a horrible thing?"

"No," Shepard answered. "A reminder that I did…well, _something_ right."

Vivek took her hand and gently squeezed it, before quite unabashedly leaning over and kissing her cheek. Then she wiped her face again, and stood. "Would you like to come see her?"

"Oh…thank you, but…no, I can't, not at the moment. I have…there are things, I should be seeing too. Thank you though."

Vivek said nothing, only offered a small smile and an understanding brush of her fingers over Shepard's shoulder, before she headed away to see to her daughter.

* * *

><p>Mornings on Tuchanka were bright, and despite the cooling shade of the ivy growing over the windows and doorway, the sun would not be thwarted.<p>

Great lancing shafts of yellow and gold broke through the vines, casting slashes of luminescence over the well-polished wood tables. The scent of paper, cloth, wood-oil and leather mingled with the sweet spice of the flowers as a breeze stirred the tangles of summersong in a light eddy.

This was the inner sanctum of the athenaeum, and only one figure occupied it. Sitting at the far table with her back toward Eír, immersed in reading, was Shrive. A glass of some sweet juice rested at hand, and her long fingers idly drifted over the rim in idle, graceful motions.

No sound was made at the careful draw of dagger from sheath, Eír's hand confidently gripping the handle of the blade. The gleam of sunlight as it caught on steel was carefully shaded, so as not to cast a tell-tale reflection over table or wall. Each cautious step of her soft boots made no more sound than the passing of time itself.

She was a predator, graceful and stealth, muscles coiled, eyes dilated, nostrils flared in anticipation of the blood of her prey. Her entire being urged to feel the strike, the hot rush of life spilling over her hands.

Shrive's fingers tapped on the cup, and there was a rustle of paper. Eír froze a moment, holding her breath, waiting. When the girl gave no clue she even sensed she was anything but alone, Eír crept forward again.

So close now. The scent of her prey, a mix of well-worked leather and spice, mingled just faintly with the heady aroma of summersong, filled her nostrils. She drew the knife carefully back, readying her strike.

Just below her shoulders, slightly to the right. She would pierce the lung, the action immediately stealing Shrive's breath. She'd be unable to react, unable to cry out or make even the slightest sound. And then a quick slash across her neck, deep, hard and swift.

Just as she tensed for the blow Shrive snatched up the cup and Eír found herself blinded as juice splashed over her face. She had inhaled at just the wrong moment and it burned her airways. She gasped, half-choking.

A wrench of the wrist and the knife was gone. The ground vanished beneath her feet, only to slam up with bruising force beneath her back and hips. An arm pressed against her throat and as she coughed, finally blinking her eyes clear, she saw Shrive's face, her hand poised to strike, wreathed in blue fire.

"How…"she rasped as oxygen finally returned to her airways. Her stunned expression changed to a scowl. "How did you _know_?"

"A trick _every_ hunter knows," Shrive said sternly. "When you stalk prey, remain _downwind_…especially if you insist on bathing with sandalwood soap."

The blue fire died as Shrive released her, snatching up the dagger and rising to her feet. Eír coughed again, rolling onto her side as she wiped a hand over her face, petulantly climbing to her feet. Shrive was regarding her dagger as if she'd never seen one before, and as Eír held her hand out for it, met her eyes.

"I wonder," she smirked. "Had I not stopped you, would this dagger even now be sheathed in my throat? Would you really have killed me, Eír?"

Eír said nothing, only stared at her. After a moment, Shrive flipped the blade in her hand, offering it back to the girl hilt first.

"Today we study," she said as Eír took it and sheathed it. Turning she plucked a volume up off the table, holding it out.

"An actual book?" Eír asked, looking at it disdainfully. "With _pages_?"

"And _wisdom_," Shrive replied. "Something you need a dose or two of."

Though Eír had been under Shrive and Misira's tutelage now for two days, she still had not fully let go of her over-confidence, her recklessness. Shrive kept having to remind herself the girl was young.

Though as Eír sat down at the table, Shrive scrutinizing her as she resumed her seat, she had to wonder. When they had first met, Shrive would have guessed Eír's age at sixty, or sixty five. Studying her now, however, and she had the look of one over eighty. Her features were slightly leaner, more mature. It may have been a subtle trick of the light but it was…odd, for all of that.

"Eír, how old _are_ you?" She asked. "I don't know that mother ever truly said."

"I don't know if she was every actually told," Eír responded.

When she said no more, Shrive lifted a brow. "Well?"

Eír looked at her with a frown. "I am ninety seven," she responded. "Is your curiosity now sated?"

"My curiosity and the curiosity of any being that seeks wisdom is never sated," Shrive replied. "Strange…you are not much younger than I. When we first met I thought you were not nearly that old."

"So?"

"So, you call a human woman 'mother'…a human woman that cannot be half of your age. Her people are not nearly as long lived as the asari or the krogan. You are not truly her child, not the spawn of her bonding with another asari so, I must wonder…how have you come to call her mother? Who are your true parents?"


	13. Chapter 13

Author's Note: Friday! Just FYI, it's another three day weekend for me, so most likely no more chapters until Tuesday. Everyone take care and be safe this weekend, especially if you have snow!

* * *

><p>It was time for the Story.<p>

It was a lie, of course…yet the only answer Eír could ever give in response to the question. Some part of her knew the real truth. That she was grown not in a womb, but in a tank, the product of Osco's genetic brilliance and expertise. She knew that in truth she was only two years old, that she had known no other family than Gellian and Thug.

But the tank had not been without its conditionings and imprints. While the truth was known to her, it was not something she could ever consciously articulate. The tank had given her the only answer she could ever utter. It was not that she lied…part of her remembered events _this_ way as well, and she was physically unable to tell any other tale than the one she was about to impart. There was no choice, no conscious deception to it at all.

"I do not know the name of my sire," she said. "My true mother was Matriarch Benezia, but it was not she who raised me."

Shrive's brows knit. "Benezia…T'Soni?"

She knew the name, vaguely. Krogan were not, in general, huge on the scandals and political machinations of other species. To their mind it was a cowardly way to fight…with words and clandestine plots. Shrive was asari but her father, grandfather, and clan were all krogan. While she had been off Tuchanka briefly before, she had never so much as set foot on the Citadel, or Thessia.

The events surrounding Matriarch Benezia's death and the attack on the Citadel were such huge news that even she had heard some of what had gone on but many specifics were so confused, twisted by rumor and hearsay and filtered through the Council's sieve of cover-up that even _had_ she followed events closely, she would still not know entirely what had happened.

"Yes," Eír replied. "She made the mistake of bonding with another asari."

"You're a pureblood?" Shrive blinked.

"Yes, I'm a _pureblood_," Eír shot back with bitter disdain. "It was scandal enough when my older sister was born, mother could not stand any more heat coming down on her house, on her children. Shortly after I was born she gave me to her sister, Matriarch Lisita, to raise. Not long after that she separated from her bond-mate. She raised my older sister, and Lisita raised me. But she was old…older by far than even Benezia. Her mind was not…age slowly took it away while I was still small and so my care was remanded to a parade of faceless servants. The only memories I have of Lisita are of her withered and sick and delusional in her bed. Yet she clung to life, for _decades_ in this state. She did not finally pass away until seven years ago.

"You were _ninety_ when your adoptive mother passed away, and yet you call Osco-"

"I _know_ what I call Osco," Eír retorted. "I call Thug _brother_ though we share no bond of blood or parentage! I _had_ no mother. Mine had given me up, and the woman she gave me to was an ill, withered stranger. The longest any nurse or servant stayed in charge of my care was five years. I _had_ no mother! Out of obligation Benezia allowed me to live in the T'Soni complex when Lisita passed but she was a ghost, always gone on tours and political trips. Her love and any maternity had already been spent on my sister Liara, she had no more left to offer me. Osco lived at the complex as well. She was Benezia's-…they were friends. I was distraught, depressed, unwanted…Gellian saved my life. She was the first person to treat me as a daughter, as _true_ family. So yes, I call her Mother, and I will accept _no insult_ to her!"

"It is no wonder you carry such anger," Shrive said after a moment of silence. Eír simply glared at her, until Shrive reached forward and picked up the book, setting it aside. "I was mistaken," she said. "Study in the field is what is needed today, and not in the pages of books. Come."

Shrive rose and headed for the doorway, the sunlight growing brighter and more golden as she parted the curtain of summersong, then paused, looking back at where Eír still sat.

Standing there, she was little more than a dark silhouette, surrounded by the draping flowers and haloed in the beaming waterfall of sunlight. It was as if the Goddess herself stood there, grace and shape but featureless, shadowed in mystery…immortality incarnate in mortal form.

"Are you coming?" Shrive asked, and Eír blinked, realizing she was staring. She felt her cheeks heat as her jaw tightened, and she stood up, striding up to the arch and then pushing past the older girl abruptly as she strode into the sunlight.

* * *

><p>By the time Shepard reached the plaza again, heading back toward the <em>Normandy's<em> dock, the place had become quite busy with the morning crowd. As she wove through the clustered bodies, hands tucked in her pockets and mind a million miles away, she slowly became aware of a distant commotion. Refocusing on reality she looked up.

A batarian was running in her general direction, still quite a distance away. He seemed quite frantic, jostling and even knocking over passersby as he bolted, packages and angry shouts scattering in his wake.

Behind him by several yards a human man ran in pursuit, the unmistakable and familiar face of a man she had never before met.

The batarian collided with a rather stocky looking woman, and for a moment it looked like he'd end up going down with her. His hands slapped the ground but his feet kept frantically churning, managing to find traction and speed him forward again. The woman he'd knocked down cursed after him in language that almost made _Shepard_ blush.

By the time the batarian drew near her was at full speed again. His four eyes wide, nostrils flaring, face damp with sweat, he didn't so much as glance at the commander as he charged near. Just as he passed her she swung out her arm, clothes-lining him beautifully.

His lower body kept moving forward while his upper was jerked back by the throat. He skipped a single step, then crashed down to the ground, croaking for air as he grasped for his throat, dazed.

Hooking her boot under his side, Shepard levered him enough to roll him over onto his stomach, then grabbed his wrist. Kneeling on the small of his back she hauled his arm around sharply enough to make him howl in pain.

A breath later his pursuer ran up, pointing the pistol in his hand at the fallen man's head. "Goddamn batarians," he grumped. "They always goddamn run."

Unsnapping a pair of bind cuffs from his belt he passed them to Shepard, who fastened them on.

"Please," the batarian wheezed. "Please, I didn't do it-"

"No one said you could talk," the man growled, kicking the man sharply in the shoulder. Shepard got to her feet, pulling the dazed man up with her.

The fellow with the gun was clearly a bounty hunter…a human man in his late fifties. His grizzled hair was buzzed short in a functional, militia cut. The right side of his face bore a rather dramatic scar that looked like something had tried to take a bite out of the side of his head. It made his features asymmetrical, slightly awkward with a mediocre plastic surgery job that was probably back-alley. It lent his look an even more menacing aspect than he probably naturally would have had.

Shepard gave the batarian a light shove. "I believe this is yours, Mr. Massani."

"Glad for the help," the bounty hunter huffed approvingly. "That was a nice take-down Shepard."

"I see we each recognized the other."

"Yeah well, Cerberus sent me your picture. I never forget a face and mine is…rather unforgettable," he answered.

The batarian unwisely snorted a weak huff of laughter and Massani glowered at him. "What's the matter?" he asked, cuffing the man on the cheek with the back of his hand. "Don't you think I'm pretty?"

"I take it Miranda finally got hold of your contact info. She tell you what we're in for?"

"Yeah, kind of a mess the way I hear it. But for the creds they're paying I could almost buy my own goddamn moon when we're done. There is a bit of a snag, however."

"Snag?"

"Tell you what. Let me get this piece of shit turned in proper-like, then I'll meet you in Afterlife for a beer. We can talk specifics."

"Sounds golden," Shepard answered. Massani gripped the batarian's arm and turned, half-dragging him across the plaza. After a few steps he deliberately tripped the man, making him stumble before hauling him back to his feet.

"Watch where you're walking, jackass," he smirked. "You almost ruined my pedicure."

* * *

><p>Though the Afterlife, like the rest of the station, never <em>really<em> went to sleep, it was almost deserted when she entered this time. The music was still loud but not nearly as deafening or driving as it was during peak hours, and she could actually walk without having to squeeze her way through a wall of people.

As she parked it at a table, a girl came up, dressed in an outfit that would probably have been illegal in most other places in the galaxy. "Get you anything, sweetie?" she asked.

Shepard hadn't yet eaten that morning, having had only smokes and coffee. She was more than famished. "What's on the grill?"

"Got scropa, some neber steak or roasted squery. Everything else will either kill you or make you wish you'd never been born."

"The steak. Rare. I want the fucker to bleed," Shepard instructed, drawing out a cigar and lighting it. Usually she never had more than two in a given day and here it was, barely breakfast time and she was on her third.

"Drink?"

"Beer," she said reluctantly. It was far too early for anything harder, even for her.

Massani arrived along with the steak. He looked at the plate approvingly as he sat down. "I like a woman who can eat real food," he said, then looked at the waitress. "Bring me one exactly like that, love."

As she wandered off, Zaeed gestured at Shepard's cigar. "_And_ smoke a real cigar. I already know you can clothes-line a man…you may just be my perfect woman, Shepard."

Shepard half-smirked, knowing better as she cut into the steak.

"Nice sentiment, but I get the feeling your perfect woman is made of metal and goes 'bang bang'," she told him.

"You're probably right," he agreed. "So, the Collectors. Money's stellar but I have to wonder. Why does Cerberus want me to help hunt down the Collectors?"

"Cerberus doesn't, _I_ do," Shepard told him. "They're funding my initiative, providing resources, but that's all. _I_ picked you, and from what I read, you're worth every damn cred. Or else you fuckin' _better_ be."

"Bloody right I am," he snorted. "I've got the skills, the contacts, everything you need. I'll do it for the creds, no question…I'll get your job done. But banter aside I only respect someone that's earned it, not just because of some rank. So don't expect me to salute you and call you ma'am."

"I'd never dream of it," Shepard replied, then gestured with her fork. "Cerberus is paying your fee but I'm going to give you a bit extra out of my own pocket. A little…side deal."

"For?"

"Those contacts of yours. I need you to put your feelers out, find someone for me. I don't need them hunted, just an address, a planet…a fucking _system_ will do. Hell, I'd take a goddamn email address."

"Your Cerberus 'resources' can't find this person?"

"Apparently not," she grumped. "They're sending me what they do have and I'll forward anything relevant to you but I have a feeling it's going to be thin shit at best."

"What's the name?"

"Dr. Liara T'Soni. She's an asari scientist."

"Catch?"

She looked up at him silently as his food arrived. He picked up his beer, taking a swig before pointing the neck of it at her. "There's always a _catch_, Shepard."

"She may be working for the Shadow Broker," she said.

"Hmm. Shadow Broker hides some of his agents well, if it's required," he agreed. "Could make things a great deal harder…and more expensive."

"I'll pay what it takes," Shepard affirmed. "I just need a location."

"What'd this T'Soni do to you?" he wondered. "Has to be something personal if you just want a location. That says you want to take care of the problem yourself, one on one. Otherwise you'd just want me to bring her in or take her down."

Her eyes turned to flint and he nodded sagely, leaning back a bit. "Oh, I see. Not that it's my place to give advice on such affairs but…if she doesn't want anything to do with you any more-"

"It's…not that. Not…not really. At least, I'm not _sure_ if it's that. It's…it's fucking _complicated_, all right? You want the creds or not?"

"Have it your way," he shrugged. "None of my business. I'll get your location, Shepard. If she's alive, I'll find out where she is."

Shepard nodded. "Not a word about this to anyone," she warned. "Not a single soul on the _Normandy_ finds out, you get me?"

"I know how to keep my mouth shut. I have been doing this a long time."

She grunted, turning back to her steak. After a few moments of silence she looked back up at him. "You mentioned a snag, earlier. Mind sharing?"

"Just after I got your job offer I had another one come in. Good pay. Not nearly as good as yours but decent. Do you know who Vido Santiago is?"

When she shook her head he explained. "He's the head of the Blue Suns. The entire organization. As you can imagine, he's got a lot of enemies. Seems he's taken over a refinery on Zorya. Moved in nice and snug. He's using the employees for slave labor. My contact wants that refinery freed, and a few bullets planted in Santiago's head."

Shepard's eyes went hard. "Slave labor?"

"Yeah. That's Vido for you. An absolute fucking prince, overflowing with harmony and love for his fellow man. I'd hate to drop that job for this one. I was hoping you'd be open to letting me finish that mess first, get it out of the way and then join back up with you further down the road. Take care of both items of business, as it were."

"I'll do you one better, Massani," she said. "I'll talk you this refinery myself, hold him down for you."

"Don't like gangsters, I take it?"

"Don't like _slavers_," Shepard snarled.

"Ah, yes. I should have remembered. Torfan. Well then, Shepard…it sounds like we have ourselves a deal."

"I think we're about done on Omega. We'll hit the black as soon as you're on board."

It seemed Miranda's prediction for a departure tomorrow was incorrect. Shepard wanted to be on her way as soon as possible. There was a Blue Sun ass out there that needed to meet her boot in the worst way.

* * *

><p>"These files are everything we have on T'Soni?" Miranda asked, looking from her data pad up to the holographic image of the Illusive Man. Casually ashing his cigarette, he nodded.<p>

"As far as Shepard is concerned, they are," he told her. As she glanced down at them again he narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.

"What is it, Miranda?" he asked.

"I just…I'm not sure that this is the right tactic any more. Keeping Shepard and T'Soni apart, I mean."

"Miranda, we discussed this at length. We both decided that this was the best course. Shepard cannot afford to be distracted."

"That's just it," Miranda replied. "We assumed T'Soni was just a lark. Shepard's psych profile indicates quite clearly that she avoids intimate relationships…a problem stemming from her trust issues, her need to maintain control. And T'Soni herself was young and naïve…it seemed Shepard was just indulging a pretty girl's crush. I was sure that Shepard would forget about her, write it off as just one of those things and move on. But that's not what's happening."

"What is it that is happening?"

"The exact _opposite_ of what we'd hoped. Shepard is not going to stop looking for her, not until she sees for herself that T'Soni is all right, hears it from her own mouth that she's moved on. That is going to prove a more serious distraction to the mission than the one we're trying to avoid. She wasn't just an indulgence, just a lark for her. Shepard has genuine feelings for T'Soni and she's not used to that. If she doesn't get a handle on it, some real closure, it's going to be a nightmare. Shepard won't quit, remember? That's why we needed her."

If her words were moving him at all, it was impossible to tell. He did a better ice-mask than _she_ did, and she was expert at it.

"What is it you would suggest?" he asked.

"_Get_ T'Soni," she replied. "Bring her to the _Normandy_, let her be part of the mission."

"This isn't a romance cruise, Miranda," he said with irritation. "It's all very touching but the truth of the matter is, we bring T'Soni on board to play house and Shepard won't see anything other than the stars in her eyes. The Reapers will win. Everything we have worked for will collapse."

"I don't think you're giving her enough credit. She stopped Sovereign with T'Soni on board-"

"And nearly got herself carelessly killed on more than one occasion," he retorted. "And that was against only one _Reaper_ and a rogue Citadel agent…_nothing_ like she faces now. We cannot afford to take the chance, Miranda."

"So then what do _you_ suggest?" she asked. "She's taking stupid risks already. Out drinking to all hours, telling a sick, delirious batarian he could _shoot _her? She went up and put her forehead against the barrel of his gun herself. Had he even been slightly startled by so much as a pin dropping her multi-billion dollar brain would right now be staining some rusty slum wall."

He let out a thin stream of smoke.

"Miranda, you know that I trust your judgment. Do you honestly believe that Shepard is becoming self-destructive to the point we might lose her?"

"Yes," she said bluntly. "Honestly, the tendency has always been there, thanks to her past history, but she resisted it by building armor, hiding any vulnerability, shielding herself…especially after what happened to Paul Salgado. Even with Nancy she managed to maintain a core of distance, never letting the woman _completely_ in. But T'Soni is _different_. Perhaps it was because of the beacon, the knowledge melds, I don't know…but for some reason Shepard let _T'soni _in, closer than anyone else has ever been to her. Combine that with the fact that the Collectors have shaken the only other emotional constant that gives her sanity support and we have a very dangerous situation on our hands. Shepard could do worse than merely kill herself, directly or indirectly. She could suffer a complete mental break-down. A sane Shepard is frightening enough at times. Can you imagine what she would do were she actually psychotic?"

"Well then, I see no other viable alternative. I shall have to take your advice."

She blinked. "You're going to contact T'Soni? Let her join the mission?"

"No," he replied. "Your _other_ suggestion. Shepard needs closure. She needs to 'hear it from her own mouth,' as you said. Any other source than Liara T'Soni herself, and Shepard will not listen, not believe. So there is no other alternative."

He stubbed his cigarette out. "Liara will just have to _tell_ Shepard that it's over. Shepard will have her closure. If she cares as much about T'Soni as you seem to think, she'll step back out of her life. That armor that's served her so well in the past will be renewed, and nothing will stop this mission from going forward successfully."

"Will T'Soni do that?" Miranda asked, clearly not convinced that the woman would.

"As far as Shepard is concerned…yes. She will."

Miranda frowned a little. "That's…risky," she said.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of it."

"I think it would be better if we just let the woman join-"

"This discussion is over, Miranda. Do your job and make sure Shepard keeps her head in the game. I know you won't fail me."

His cybernetic blue eyes were stern ice and seemed somehow to linger on in warning, even after the holograph had faded.

* * *

><p>"Big place, just his style," Zaeed grumped as he looked at the sailing metal walls, the great smoking chimneys of the refinery.<p>

"He's found himself the perfect fortress," Shepard said. "Unfriendly terrain, thick metal walls, limited points of access…everything a king needs to be safe and secure."

The three of them were crouched in heavy underbrush, surveying the refinery that lay sprawled in the distance, down a slight incline. Zorya…at least, this part of Zorya, had jungles almost thick enough to remind her of Ilos. The refinery was smack dab in the middle of the biggest one, flanked by granite foothills on two sides.

"They don't have our location but they know we are here," Miranda said, one hand to her ear. She had been monitoring the Suns radio band, sifting through various chatter for any relevant information or alert to their presence. "There's just been an order to increase the security force at the west gate, and to keep an eye out for armed intruders."

She peered over Shepard's shoulder, then pointed at the small gate nearest them. "There."

"Must have had a spy point in the trees," Shepard murmured. "A wireless or a bubble mech."

"I say we go up and knock on the door," Zaeed suggested.

"They'll see us coming fifty yards away," Shepard disagreed. "They'll have plenty of time to start picking off civvies."

"Vido will consider them an investment," Zaeed shook his head. "He won't start liquidating his investments, not when he's got an entire army against just three intruders. Chances are, he'll seal them up, close them off so no one can get it in their mind to bolt while he and his Suns take care of the problem."

Shepard's brown eyes settled on him sternly. "You seem to know an awful lot about Santiago, Zaeed. Something you care to share?"

"Nothing important," he shrugged, still peering down at the gate. "He used to be my partner, back when we founded the Blue Suns."

Both Shepard and Miranda stared at him a moment before Shepard scowled, hissing, "You helped found the Blue Suns? And you don't think that's _important?_"

"It doesn't matter," he huffed. "It was a long time ago. And it kind of ended when he stabbed me in the goddamn back…or rather, shot me in the _head_. You and I have something in common, Shepard. We're both harder to kill than other people would like."

Shepard felt her anger rising. "This isn't a job, is it? Someone didn't hire you for this. If you're here for some twisted notion of _vengeance_-"

"What difference does it make?" he wanted to know. "Motivations don't change facts. Everything I told you about the refinery, about the slaves…that's all true. Are you going to walk away now just because someone _else_ isn't paying me for this? Leave them in there to rot? Leave Vido sitting in his fortress like a little king, pissing on his subjects?"

Shepard could feel her teeth creak under the amount of force with which she clenched her jaw. Like smoldering embers, her eyes shifted from him to Miranda as the operative spoke.

"According to scans, there's a smaller secondary door just around the corner from the gate, which will be impossible to get open anyway without leaving ourselves wide open to gunfire. We'd be under cover all the way to it and we should come into the building from an unexpected direction. It won't be much but it's better than hitting that gate directly."

Shepard looked toward the refinery again. Much as it pissed the ever-living fuck out of her, Zaeed was right. The situation hadn't changed. If there were civvies in there, being held for slave labor. Shepard couldn't leave them in that situation.

"We'll hit the door," she said, then gripped Zaeed's arm, meeting his mismatched eyes with an intense severity. "Don't you _ever_ lie to me again."

She didn't threaten him with what she would do if he did. She didn't try and scare him with descriptive about how she'd cut every one of his goddamn fingers off before kicking his ass right out of an airlock if he even so much as _thought _a lie in her direction. It wasn't so much a threat anyway as a simple statement…wrath would descend in unholy waves of hellfire if he lied to her again. It was as inevitable and natural a truth as if she had said that night would fall after the sun had set, and simply didn't need saying.

Wordlessly the trio moved down the hill, keeping to cover as they swung around to the flanking door. There was a small camera but being as it was a refinery and not an actual military compound, it had been installed to take in the approach, leaving a huge blind-spot at the door itself. They managed to stay out of its scope, Miranda working on disabling it with her omni-tool while Shepard set to work hacking the door.

Slipping inside, she kept to the shadows of the narrow hallway, glancing back as Miranda and Zaeed followed quietly behind her. If Miranda's schematics and the radio transmissions were accurate, there were going to be a whole lot of merc fuckers in the next room, poised to pounce the moment anyone approached that gate.

The door at the end was old fashioned, hinged. The refinery had cut more than one corner, it seemed. Unlatching it slowly she crouched, easing it open just far enough to slip the barrel of her sniper through. Putting her eye to the scope she took in the scene in the room beyond.

No hostages or civvies at least. That was a point in their favor. Huge pipes ringed the walls, part of the gas pressure system that powered the gates and probably the entire complex. Gas pressure power was dangerous but a lot cheaper than eezo, solar, or hydrodynamic energy. Yet another corner cut with a business eye more on profits than safety.

A cluster of blue armored men and women had gathered in the room, most with guns trained on the gates but a couple that seemed either to be receiving or transmitting information. A tall catwalk overlooked the scene, another pair of Suns looking out over the railing.

Moving her scope she did a silent count. Not so bad as she had feared, but hardly the most ideal. Without lowering her rifle she balanced it between her shoulder and one hand as she lifted the other toward her companions.

She extended her full hand twice, all five fingers extended, then pointed downward.

_Ten men, ground floor._

Then she held out two fingers and pointed up and to the right.

_Two men, upper level, that way._

Pondering a moment, she drew back and straightened, easing the door shut again.

"What are you doing?" Zaeed demanded in a loud whisper. "We can take them."

"Not until we know where the civvies are," Shepard replied. "We go in there guns blazing and…the _fuck…?"_

Mid-sentence, Zaeed shoved past her and slammed his foot into the door, banging it open and startling the mercs inside. His pistol flashed as he rushed out into the room, taking down two of the Suns before they realized what was happening.

Swearing, Shepard barked, "Miranda!" before she also ran into the room, laying down a hail of cover fire before Zaeed got his ass shot.

_Fucker deserves it! What the fuck is he thinking?_

The room echoed with a cacophony of gunfire as the mercs recovered from their startlement. A wave of blue biotics tossed several back from their feet as Miranda joined Shepard's rush for cover, which took the form of the very console that controlled the gate. As they ducked behind it, Massani made it to the far end of the room, behind a thick cluster of the main gas pipes.

Sparks flew as the gunfire clustered on Miranda and Shepard's cover, even the mercs not stupid enough to shoot at Zaeed for fear of rupturing the pipes.

Then, abruptly, the barrage ended, leaving a fading echo behind. Shepard slowly eased her sniper back and drew one of her machine pistols instead as a voice filled the air.

"You're pinned down, and I have half a dozen more men heading to this position right now. So, why don't we make this simple and easy."

"Vido, you son of a bitch," Zaeed barked back. "The only simple and easy thing that's going to happen here today is me putting a bullet in your goddamn brain."

Shepard groaned faintly, closing her eyes. "I'm going to kill that fucker," she whispered to Miranda. "I swear to fuckin' God, I'll kill him myself if Santiago doesn't take him out."

"Zaeed? Is that you? Oh…this _is_ a surprise! What did I do to earn the pleasure of getting to kill you…_again_?"

"You're the one that's going to die!"

"How do you figure? I have forty men here ready to kill or die at my command, Zaeed. You have…what? Your geriatric old self and…two women was it? I'm pretty sure I saw just two little girls."

"Little girls?" Miranda whispered indignantly. "Bad enough he's a slaver, now he has to be misogynistic?"

There was the echoing snap of a shot, coinciding with a bang of metal and a hiss. Shepard half looked around the console to see the large gas tank just beneath the catwalk now bore a hole. The gas was invisible but rippled the air faintly as it vented. The man standing atop the catwalk with the two mercs she'd spotted earlier, laughed.

"You missed! What, are you blind too-"

Zaeed grit his teeth ferally and fired again, this time sparking his shot off the edge of the walk. Shepard barely had time to duck down as the leaking gas igniting.

The whole of existence seemed to push outward in a flare of incredible heat as the tank and surrounding air exploded into flames.


	14. Chapter 14

_Whipping around she snatched hold of Joker's arm, ignoring his startled yelp of pain as she all but bodily lifted him out of the pilot's chair. _

{We have no more time!} _she snapped as she hauled him toward the helm's escape pod. As the door hissed open she pushed him inside. He would probably suffer a few fractures but there was no time to be gentle. _

_Even as she shoved, she felt a shove herself as the helm erupted with a violent, flaming cough. Slamming into the edge of the pod door she rebounded, the force enough to tear her magnet locked boots away from the deck. Reaching out frantically she felt her fingertips brush over the frame of the pod hatch, saw Joker's alarmed face gape back at her, eyes wide._

_He struggled up, trying to get to his feet, one hand reaching out as if he had any hope of catching hold of her._

{Commander!}

Shepard had dove flat onto her belly at the explosion, hands slapping over the back of her helmet instinctively. Beside her, she could vaguely sense Miranda had done the same as shards of twisted, heated metal rained down around them.

For an alarming moment, Shepard couldn't get her breath. Though she gasped, nothing but empty useless vacuum was burning at her throat.

_My oxygen is leaking! The lines must have been cut in the blast! I'll fall into the gravity well-_

But no. There was no gravity well. She was not in space, but rather laying flat on the floor of a refinery. Her next breath drew in plenty of oxygen.

Slamming her hands down she pushed up off the floor, sweeping up her pistol and aiming it toward the catwalk. A pair of forms hung dead from the twisted metal, another handful scattered over the ground just a few feet away. Being shielded by their cover had prevented the brunt of the explosion from hitting Shepard and Miranda but it was a close enough thing.

Fire jetted out of the torn tank and from ruptured pipes. Another distant rumble trembled underfoot as something further in the refinery gave way.

A form ran from the side and ducked through the edge of the spitting fire, aiming for a door only half-seen in through the flames. Shepard's fury was at full bore as she shouted after it.

"_Zaeed!"_

"We have to get out of here before the entire gatehouse goes up!" Miranda called. She was on her feet, a bit singed as Shepard was but apparently unhurt. Both women bolted for the door, half-ducking and lifting their arms to shield themselves as they charged past the flames. It was like passing through a molten waterfall, a roaring rush that lasted only an instant, the heat intense enough to feel even through their insulated hard-suits.

Then it was gone, and they were running through the inner door after Massani, finding themselves in the refinery courtyard.

Zaeed had stopped, bent over slightly with his hands on his knees, panting. Shepard didn't slow, shipping her pistol as she ran. She grabbed hold of the man and slammed him back against a support pylon for an upper catwalk.

"What the _fuck_ was that?" she snarled.

"Getting rid of some of the resistance," he growled back. "Opening the goddamn doors."

"You do _anything _like that again without asking my goddamn permission and I'll turn you into a fucking _smear_ on the fucking _wall_!"

"I didn't have time to spout 'please and thank you'! Vido was going to get away and still will, if we don't hurry!"

"_You-"_

"Help!"

A voice cut called out frantically from somewhere above. Instantly two helmets and one bare head turned upward toward the figure clinging to a catwalk above them. Fire was raging everywhere, having spread to the entire complex through the gas pipes. The man was clearly a civvie, his clothes streaked with soot, wide-eyed and shaking as he shouted down at them.

"Help us, please! Everyone's trapped! The fire! I tried to get to the others but I can't!"

"Fucking _leave_ them," Zaeed snorted, grasping Shepard's arm and pointing. "Vido went this way-"

Her knuckles made a very satisfactory cracking sound as they slammed into his jaw, staggering him back slightly. She used his momentum to leverage her arm under his throat and pin him to the pylon. Behind her helmet face-plate, her eyes were almost as aflame as the refinery was.

"You'd leave these people to _die_? In a fire _you_ fucking started?"

"Damn right I would," he grimaced. She pressed her arm tighter.

"We're getting them out, _chun zhu_." Her voice was low, almost perfectly calm. "You take a step any direction but along with me _to get them out_ and there'll be _no_ coming back from what I'll do to you."

Releasing him she turned and quickly scanned the area. Without waiting to see if Zaeed would follow, knowing that Miranda at least would, she jumped over a low railing and dropped down to a landing a few feet below where they stood. A moment later she heard another pair of feet drop to the metal landing…too light to be Massani.

By the time she reached the door into the refinery control center, however, she heard Massani's heavier weight slam to the ground as well.

The control center was dense with smoke, a riot of flame raging or spitting from a dozen different points. The heat was intense, even through her hard-suit, and the wail of an alarm klaxon was all pervasive.

_{Abandon ship! All crew to pods!} _

_{This is SSV Normandy! We've taken heavy damage from an unknown dreadnought!}_

"Help!" the voice was muffled, the distant slap of hands on glass banishing Joker's frantic voice from her memory, making her blink slightly. Out of the gloom Shepard saw faces peering desperately at her from behind a soot-streaked observation window.

Either Santiago and his Suns had rounded most of the civvies into the large work room when they'd first realized Shepard and her team were there, or else they had taken shelter within of their own accord when the first explosion had hit. Either way, they were now trapped, locked in what equated to a big metal and glass box in the middle of a raging inferno.

The glass was thick enough only the faintest of sounds was making it through, but the man on the other side was determined for her to hear.

"_The door won't unlock until the fire's out,"_ he shouted, Shepard straining to understand him. _"The suppression system is down! It has to be activated manually from upstairs! The main office!"_

Shepard nodded her understanding, giving him a sit-tight gesture. Spotting a wall unit Shepard tore it open, pulling out a re-breather mask and throwing it hard into Massani's chest. "Put that on. You stay down here and try and get that door open," she ordered him. "Lawson and I will go up and hit the suppression system."

She had more than one reason for leaving him behind to try and work the door…a task she knew would likely prove impossible. For one, she didn't trust him to watch her back, not after the shit he'd just pulled. Secondly, she wanted him to _see_ those people's faces…people suffering, choking, terrified…because of what _he'd_ done.

Getting up to the office was like working through a pit of damnation. Every few moments the ground would shake or rumble with burgeoning explosions. The air was filled with smoke so dense that they were relying more on their HUD's infrared displays than any hope of physical sight. The only light was from the flames themselves, and more than once they had to blindly charge through a curtain of fire and hope to come out the other end intact.

Shepard could feel the sweat beading on her face, trickling down her temples and neck as she strained with Miranda to close a final shut-off valve. The door to the office was blocked by a broken pipe, the ignited gas sheeting orange, white and red death between their position and the sealed door. If they didn't get this shut off there was no way they could enter. They'd be cooked inside their hard-suits long before they could get the door manually opened and inside.

Both women straining at full bore on the valve didn't seem to want to release it. Shepard mentally cursed her still-not-optimal condition as she grit her teeth. She could feel her arms knotting and strained even harder. What was a pulled muscle or a torn tendon compared to the deaths of all those people?

With a protesting groan, the valve suddenly slipped slightly, began to move. Hauling even harder, they finally managed to get it turned, the roaring jet blocking the doorway finally dying.

Her hand landed on Miranda's shoulder a moment as she stepped past, heading toward the now clear door.

The console was overheated, but she managed to bypass the lockdown and get the door to unlatch. It wouldn't open under its own power but the two women again put their shoulders to the wheel, struggling with it just enough to be able to slip within.

The office itself, thankfully, was undamaged though thinly fogged with smoke. Finding the suppression system's manual control, Shepard wrenched it open, then hauled down the lever.

Water instantly began to rain down as the gas mains deep beneath the complex clamped shut one by one. Watching the display nearby, Shepard didn't let out a breath until all the clamps showed green. If the fire had reached the main storage tank below the facility, the explosion would have been so huge rescue teams wouldn't have even found teeth to identify them.

With the gas off and the fire quickly dying, the air filtration systems were able to start thinning the black smoke. As they got back down to the main floor, they were able to see again without relying on their HUDs.

Zaeed and the civvies were soaking wet, but only Zaeed was scowling as Shepard and Miranda reached them. The civvies, free of their cage, clustered around with sodden, tearful thanks.

"Stay in here until the all clear," she told them. "We'll make sure the last of the Blue Suns is routed out and that they won't be coming back."

The majority of them retreated into the deeper offices, wanting to be well away from any direction the Suns might come in. A few went up to turn off the fire suppression systems, and after only a few moments the three from the _Normandy_ found themselves alone.

"Can we go after Vido now?" Zaeed asked. "Or is there a kitten stuck in a tree you'd like to fetch first?"

"No," Shepard told him dryly, eyes flint. "I already _have_ a fucking pussy along. Now move your ass before I put a bullet in it."

"Hey, I was shooting batarians before you were done pissing your nappies, little girl," he snarled after her as she strode out of the offices and into the corridors toward the main refinery floor.

"And now you're pissing _yours_, old man," she snapped back. "Risking people's lives so the big bad man who betrayed you gets his fucking spanking…"

"You don't think Vido is going to kill people if he gets away? You don't think his Suns will just keep on murdering and slaving-"

"Oh, so _now_ it's a morality issue with you? Morals didn't figure in when you started the Blue Suns to begin with, or when you were willing to leave dozens of people to die in front of you."

"And you're better? The Butcher of Torfan…I hear you shot a little boy on his knees."

Shepard felt her gut grow cold despite the sweat still trickling down her neck. She said nothing, all her strength going in to _not_ surgically removing his nose with a bullet. Zaeed snorted at her silence.

"Hit a soft spot, did I?"

She knew better than to keep her helmet off for any length of time during a serious op. If nothing else she'd learned that lesson very well on Feros, when a giant fungus in the shape of a human man had vomited in her face, the toxin nearly driving her both mad and to death.

She removed it now, however. The FSS was still sheeting water down in heavy sprays of artificial rain. Ducking her head under one of these sprays, she felt the cold bite into her cheeks, the grimy, itchy sweat washed away in an instant. Swiping back her now dripping hair she slammed her helmet back on and locked it down.

Miranda, more than wisely staying out of the middle of the confrontation, remained silent. Surprised that the commander hadn't taken a layer of skin off of Massani after that last comment, she moved forward only as they reached the refinery door, helping Shepard to pry it open.

Zaeed was the first one through, not even bothering to take a look and assess what might be beyond. It was fucking stupid, and for a bounty hunter of his experience, inexplicable. He couldn't have gained the reputation he had, survived as long as he had, by making such things a regular habit.

_So he's either so blinded by revenge he's thrown all sense out the window completely, or the fucker is suicidal…or both._

Right now she didn't particularly care if he got himself killed. If one of the Suns didn't do it, she was tempted to do it her damn self.

Sadly, however, that didn't happen. There was no Suns ambush until they were halfway across the refinery floor, and what few troops had lingered behind were dispatched easily enough.

It was the heavy mech that suddenly lit up its face-plates in the distance that was of more concern.

The trio was hidden behind a stack of metal cargo containers, Miranda's blue eyes shifting a little as they regarded the mech. "Zaeed and I can hit it hard enough to distract it," she whispered to Shepard. "Let you get in close with a grenade."

"Grenade can't take out one of those," Zaeed snorted derisively. "That's a goddamn heavy. It's going to take a lot of firepower from all three of us to take that bastard down. Might be faster to find another way round, avoid it altogether."

"For some reason, Shepard has decided _not_ to shoot you which demonstrates remarkable restraint," Miranda glared. "I pride myself on my restraint as well, but if you talk to me like that again, I'll slam your head into the ceiling with biotics until you forget your own name."

"You can't…" He began, then glanced past her to where Shepard was unshipping her sniper. "Jesus fucking…Shepard, I thought you were supposed to be some kind of elite soldier, best of the Alliance. You can't take down a goddamn heavy with a sniper. Caliber is too small to do more than scuff its panels and let it know exactly where we are."

She ignored him, carefully lining up her shot. Letting out a slow breath, she squeezed the trigger.

Above the mech, a gas transport module the size of the same cargo containers they were currently sheltered behind was in the grip of a transport claw. It had been in the process of being moved from the gas fill station to the cargo containers for storage. Her shot landed beautifully, right on the external emergency release.

The claw obediently snapped open, the one ton module almost gracefully beginning its fall.

Snapping her rifle down she ducked into a crouch, Miranda and Zaeed doing the same. They heard the module hit the mech and then the ground with a heavy boom that shook the floor, only to be followed seconds later by a much deeper boom. The module had ruptured as it hit the mech, the gas ignited by the heavy's dying sparks. The cargo containers rattled in the wake of the blast. When they'd settled again, Shepard looked over them and toward where the mech had stood.

There was now only a twisted ruin of blackened metal. Save for a few tiny pieces, it was impossible to tell what had been mech and what had been container.

"Well I'll be…" Zaeed blinked.

"Let's move," Shepard ordered, swapping her sniper for her machine pistol, moving around the containers and past the half melted chunk of debris toward the door. As she reached it, she heard the distinct whine of powering engines.

Fresh air surrounded them as the door snapped open. It was the back landing pad of the refinery, nothing but trees and sky beyond. A gunship, lathered with the Blue Suns insignia, was just lifting off. Weapon ready Shepard ran out onto the platform but it was Zaeed who fired, letting off a furious torrent from his rifle at the armored ship. For one crazy moment, Shepard almost thought he'd succeed in taking it down. All it would take would be a single lucky shot cracking the canopy and hitting the pilot, or puncturing a thin section of armor and overloading the engine's power core.

Then the blasts of fire stopped, replaced with ratcheting as the gun's thermal clip overheated. Snarling, Zaeed slapped it out. His face was streaked with sweat and lines of grime. Flecks of spittle coated his lips as he panted through clenched teeth. Tearing his eyes off the gunship he aimed his weapon at Shepard's face.

"_You just cost me twenty years of my life_!" he bellowed at her. Shepard more or less ignored him. He'd gotten his old clip out but hadn't replaced it, so his gun wasn't going to fire anyway. And only a fucking fool would take their eyes off an actual gunship that was still in range of-

"Incoming!" Shepard barked a warning as the unmistakable contrail appeared. The ship had fired a missile back at the dock, Vido's final 'fuck you'.

Shepard and Miranda dove for cover as the missile struck. Slamming to the ground, Shepard could hear heavy debris pelting all around them. Risking a look, she saw that Miranda had covered them with a biotic bubble, shielding them from the worst of it.

Gingerly climbing to her feet, Shepard took stock.

_You know it's a bad day when you lose count of the explosions_, she thought with a derisive snort, looking at her companion.

"You ok?"

"Little rattled, but all right," Miranda answered. "Massani?"

Shepard's eyes narrowed as she peered around, then lightly slapped the Australian's shoulder, pointing. "There."

Zaeed was on the ground, coughing. A girder, torn free from the blast, pinned his lower body. As she strode over, Shepard assessed the situation. He was trapped…might have a broken leg but the girder wasn't big enough to do a huge amount of damage. He'd probably even be able to move it himself, given a lot of time and frustration.

As he spotted her he grunted. "Get this goddamn thing off of me."

"No," Shepard replied, drawing off her helmet. His gun had landed close beside him and she kicked it aside before crouching , setting her helmet down.

"The fuck, Shepard…you can't just leave me here!"

She shrugged, glancing at the girder. "Hmm. Don't see why not."

"So that's it then? You can't take someone talking back to you so you're just going to leave me to rot."

She looked at him intently, face stone. "No, Zaeed. You see, the Collectors took my friend. A woman who saved my life, who was the only real mother I can ever remember having. They could be doing anything to her, do you understand? _Anything._ She's probably even already dead but that doesn't matter. I'm going after them, and nothing is going to get in my way. What does your life matter when compared to that?"

"Oh, I get it…you're going to leave me trapped here like I was going to leave the civvies."

"This isn't a fucking lesson, Zaeed. I don't have the air or the patience to sit here and try and teach you something about life. What this comes down to is simple. You're a fucking _risk_. You don't listen to orders, you put your team members and innocent people in danger time and again for your own personal agenda. That bullshit does not fly with me. We could have been killed, do you understand that? I don't need that on my ship or on my mission, so as far as I'm concerned, you can fucking _rot_ here."

"Fine, leave me," he glowered. "But remember, it's you that needs _me_, not the other way round. Or did you forget our little side deal?"

Shepard glanced up toward Miranda, who was lingering out of ear shot, looking over the missile damage and calling the _Normandy_. She looked back down at him.

"Like you're the only fucking bounty hunter or piece of shit scum with contacts that I can get," she scoffed. "I can't have you on my ship or my team."

He was silent as he stared at her with his mismatched eyes. It was only as she went to straighten that he spoke again. "Is it true you put your own forehead to a batarian's gun on Omega?"

She paused, settling back into her crouch again as she looked at him. "Yes," she said simply.

"Scuttlebutt on the lower decks says you did it to save a civvie, a doctor."

"So?"

"Takes balls," he answered. "You've got a serious set, you know that Shepard? It's been…too fucking long since I had to worry about having a team. Been on my own, doing things my own way, for more years than I care to count. I can't remember the last time anyone's dared talk to me the way you did."

"If you've got a point, get to it. I have things to do."

"I'm not done chasing Vido," he told her. "Man took my life away, everything I had. You of all people should understand what that's like. Nothing tears you apart inside quite the same as dying. Everything you worked for, bled for…everyone you cared about, all banished with a single trigger pull. Seems you've turned that pain into a drive, a determination to make things right. I turned mine into a drive too…one to make that man pay. Maybe it would have been different if I'd had someone…well, doesn't matter. I'm not proud of what I've become, Shepard…or who I was before that trigger was even pulled. Man makes a lot of mistakes in life."

Shepard watched him silently. She didn't think he was just blowing smoke up her ass to get her to give him a second chance. He knew he could get out himself given a couple hours and some struggling. He didn't need the _Normandy_ at all…didn't need her crusade for any reason, except perhaps the money. Even then, his desire for vengeance burnt hotter than any need for money. All he had to do was let her and Miranda walk away, extract himself, then continue on his hell-bent mission after Vido.

No, this wasn't smoke.

"I can't trust you, Zaeed," she said tiredly.

"I know, but I want the chance to earn it. Maybe do something right for a damn change. I want to try, Shepard. Doing things my own way...well, look where it got me. Tell you what. If I give you cause even one more time, you can put a bullet in my head. And then I can spend the next twenty years chasing _you_ down with a face even prettier than mine is now."

Despite herself, Shepard had to fight a smirk. Sighing, she wiped a hand over her face, shaking her head and getting to her feet. "You're a fucking lucky bastard, that's all I have to fucking say," she sniffed, then gripped hold of the girder to lift it free.

* * *

><p>Pale fingers rested lightly on the asari's dark blue crest a moment, affectionately, before they fell away. Gellian leaned over Eír's shoulder, peering into the mirror.<p>

She avoided looking at her own face as much as she was able. Gaunt, haggard, whatever loveliness the human woman had once possessed was lost in this ghost of herself. She hid the worst of the drug use, the headaches, from both her children.

Eír had a road to greatness spread before her. Gellian no longer cared what happened to her. Had it not been for Eír and Thug she would be dead already. Her mind was lost, only a ghost of what it once had been. Not-Shepard was her almost constant companion now, along with other, darker beings that tore at her head with their claws, gnawed at her good-sense with their poisonous teeth.

No. Gellian was gone. The tormented shell that remained had only one drive, one purpose. She had to see that Eír met her destiny…one that required her entire focus to be on her training, her entire being bent on its conclusion.

Shepard _had_ to die.

There was no time for second guesses. No time for the girl to be distracted with Gellian's failing health and mental stability…nor by anything _else_.

"What is this I hear of a hunt?" she asked, watching as the girl carefully daubed patterns of white face-paint on her skin…familiar patterns.

"Buhto is taking his boys and Thug on a hunt," Eír replied. "It is part of their training. They get to take only rudimentary weapons and the greatest honor goes to the biggest kill taken with the weakest weapon. They say Buhto strangled a dirt rhino with his bare hands on his first hunt."

"The krogans way of training is for the krogan," Gellian replied. "Your way is of the asari, which is why you are under Matriarch Misira and Shrive's tutelage. This hunt is not your concern."

Eír blinked at her in the mirror, pausing in her painting a moment. "Why not? Yeah, it's Tuchanka and it's a bit different but the asari have a hunt as well, on Thessia. Theirs is just in the sea."

"And the Matriarch thinks it wise that you participate in this hunt as well?"

"The Matriarch thinks there is wisdom in all experiences," she touted. "She says there are things I will learn on the hunt that I cannot learn as well any other way."

"So the Matriarch will be with you?" Gellian asked, straightening a little.

"No. This is for the students. She'll be staying back as will Buhto. The boys will go on their own and so will I and Shrive-"

"Shrive is no _student_," Gellian spat with a venom that surprised even her. Eír's eyes widened a little in startlement at its vehemence. "She is your teacher as well. Why is she not staying back?"

"Shrive is Misira's student," Eír retorted. "Why does it matter? As you said, the hunt is not the same for the krogan as it is for the asari, not even on Tuchanka. I can't go with the boys, it wouldn't be the same, and I can't go alone."

"Why not?"

"Why does it matter?" Eír asked.

"This…this _matters_!" Gellian snapped, batting the small pot of face-paint out of the girl's hand. Eír was so startled she could only stare in shock. Gellian fixed her daughter's gaze, her own hot and fevered. "I know! I know what this _is_, Eír! I am not blind nor a fool!"

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Eír gasped. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, she doesn't realize!" Not-Shepard, who had been lingering in the corner watching with silent glee, now chortled. "Poor precious little young Eír. So sweet and naïve of herself."

Gellian trembled, her furious gaze sliding to the hallucination in the corner before re-fixing on her daughter. "There are too many distractions here," she said bluntly. "You are here for training, to learn, nothing else."

"I _am_ training and learning," Eír retorted.

"And face paint? Where does that come in?"

"Both Misira and Shrive use it. Asari paint their faces, Mother! You know that."

"Not all," Gellian glowered. She didn't mention that asari more often than not chose their own patterns, something with special meaning to them. Misira and Shrive both did so but their patterns were different from each other's. Eír's, however, was a replication of Shrive's.

"Why are you so upset?" Eír pressed. Gellian took her daughter by the shoulders and looked intently into her eyes.

"What are we doing, Eír?" she asked. "What is it that you want the most?"

Eír blinked, then narrowed her eyes slightly. "To kill Shepard," she answered. "You know that."

"Oh no, she doesn't," Not-Shepard interjected with a happy sing-song. "She did until she got here, now she wants-"

"You remember how dangerous she is," Gellian warned, ignoring the shade. "She _will_ kill you and she _will_ kill your brother if you're not ready. You cannot be distracted, Eír. Shepard _must_ die."

"I-I know," Eír replied faintly.

"Do what you must, Eír. Learn. Be strong. Be focused. Everything will be yours, everything. None will match you in power, in strength, but first…Shepard must die. Don't throw that away over foolishness."

"I…didn't realize face paint was such foolishness," Eír replied, confused. Not-Shepard chortled again, dancing around in mad little circles, all but ecstatic with delight.

"She doesn't know, she doesn't know," she sing-songed. "She doesn't know her own poor fake little heart!"

Gellian dropped her hands, suddenly weary beyond mention. "If you are wise, girl…and I pray that you are…when your training is done, when you have finally beaten your teacher and stand with your knife on her throat…you _will_ cut it."

As she walked away, Eír stared after her. Had Gellian heard of her stalking Shrive in the athenaeum? Had someone seen, realized how close she'd come to ending the older asari right then and there? If so, she'd have more expected her mother to warn her off, tell her that killing Shrive served no purpose and opened up the potential for far too many allies turning into enemies…not actually _encouraging_ her to do it!

* * *

><p>As they stepped back aboard the <em>Normandy<em>, all Shepard wanted was a shower. She was grimy and itchy with sweat, muscles aching miserably with over-use, and right now sheer heaven could be translated into simple water, cranked to the point it was almost scalding.

As she stepped in through decom, however, and saw Kelly waiting there, she felt her hopes for that shower dim a little.

The yeoman nodded politely to Zaeed and Miranda as they stepped inside, the former limping a bit but fortunately without any broken bones. Shepard was the last one in, and fixed Chambers with a tense, wary glance.

"What…?" she hedged.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Chambers said politely. "It's good to see you all returned none-the-worse for wear. I know that you probably want a shower and a hot meal so I will not keep you long."

"It's not life-threatening is it?" Shepard asked. "It's not going to make me want to punch things?"

"On the contrary, ma'am, I'm hoping it will make you very happy," Chambers told her. "We have the files you asked for, all the information that Cerberus has on Dr. T'Soni and her movements since the original _Normandy_ went down. The OSD is sitting on your desk upstairs, waiting your perusal. More, you have received a private communication, a recording. The information contained within is highly encrypted, its origin very well masked…however it _was_ sent with a name."

"What name?"

"Tianlán."

Shepard stared only a half a breath, before she strode past the yeoman, dumping her helmet into the woman's arms as she did. It took all she had not to break into a run as she walked through the CIC and to the lift.

The ride seemed to take forever. Shepard was half-way out of her hard-suit by the time she reached the Crow's Nest. Her civvies underneath were clinging to her with half-dried sweat and she knew she reeked of smoke and stink, but the shower was all but forgotten. Powering on her console she spotted the two files immediately.

The larger was the information file from Cerberus. She ignored that one, her eyes fixing to the link for the second.

A single word. It was Chinese for 'sky blue', the nickname that Shepard had given to Liara almost the very moment they'd first met. Settling into her chair, she took a deep breath and selected it.

The screen went dark. A breath later, it brightened again, bringing with it the image of a familiar face.

It was Liara. She had seated herself in front of a plain background, only a featureless wall behind her, giving no clue as to her location. She looked well, healthy if not a bit tired. Though her eyes fixed to the screen her gaze seemed to look through it, avoid it, and her body language spoke of hesitation.

"Shepard," she murmured, then hesitated, looking downward a moment before lifting her gaze again. "I am…sorry. I have started this message a dozen times and cannot seem to…i-it doesn't matter. When I heard you were alive again, I could not believe it. I pulled so many strings, trying to find out if it was true and-…"

She broke off. Shepard could see the dampness on her lashes, and could feel her own eyes heating as she watched the asari try to regain some composure. After a moment, she went on.

"So much has happened, since…since I lost you," she murmured. "I thought the entire galaxy had fallen apart with the _Normandy_. Those first few months are mostly just a blur. It…took a long time, Shepard, before I started to feel anything again…anything but pain, I mean. There is…there is too much to go into over a simple recording. Perhaps one day we can meet in person and talk but…I can't. Not right now. It is still too raw. I had just started to believe I could be happy again and then this…perhaps that sounds selfish. You may have heard that I work for the Broker now. That is how I found out that you were brought back. When he told me that you were on Omega, I had to send those packages. I knew you would be worried about me, and I had to let you know that I was all right. And…I could not think of my Del without her cigars."

She gave a tiny smile, then looked down again as the dampness in her eyes welled and overflowed down her cheeks. Her lip trembled a moment before she bit it, then took a shuddering breath. "Shepard, you mean so much to me. I know you may not understand but as I said, so much has happened since you left. So much has changed. I'm doing such important work right now and there is..."

She wiped a hand over her cheeks, straightening a little. Shepard sat back, eyes unfocused, reflecting the asari's face.

"There is no easy way to say it. He was there, Shepard. He helped me through so much of the pain," Liara spoke quickly, as if afraid the slightest hesitation would shatter her resolve. "He asked nothing in return. He had no reason to be so understanding, so patient with me and yet….he was _there_, Shepard."

Anger seemed to tinge the grief in her voice, and she wiped her cheeks again, then shook her head. "Well. I…cannot tell you where I am right now. As I said, I am in the midst of some very important work…as I know you are. You could never be anywhere than right in the thick of the fray. I just wanted you to know that I am all right, to tell you that what we had…I will always cherish it."

She looked up again, her aqueous blue eyes seeming to fix directly to Shepard's brown. "One day we will talk again, see each other again," she promised. "If nothing else, you will always be my friend, Shepard…I will _always_ care for you. Please…_stay safe_. I…"

She broke off again, eyes slipping away a moment before she covered them. A silent moment passed before her hand lowered and she murmured a simple 'good-bye.'

The recording ended.

Shepard shut her eyes.


	15. Chapter 15

Black hair settled over a pink silk robe as Miranda tied it shut, padding from her bedroom to her small office. Though her quarters were not as large as the Crow's Nest, they were more than adequate and honestly, more luxurious than some accommodations she'd been presented with since joining Cerberus.

She was still trying to settle in, to feel at home. She had been used to shuffling from ship to ship, project to project, but being at Lazarus station for two years, she had begun to feel slightly rooted, settled. Now on the move again, it simply felt…odd.

The simple act of seating herself at her workstation caused her five console screens to automatically power on, and a brush of her fingers over the DNA sensor beside her HI keyboard accessed her most secure programs. The consoles lit up with a wealth of various information…scrolling ship and project reports, relevant information from her wide network of both Cerberus and non-Cerberus contacts, security vid feeds from various areas of the _Normandy_ itself, and Orianna's update page.

She always went over Orianna's page first. Usually short, it simply gave school status updates, indications of various activities or anything that went outside the usual schedule and routine of her day. It reassured Miranda that the girl was safe, happy, and living normally.

That done, Miranda half-turned her attention to various ship reports scrolling over one screen as she accessed old Lazarus files on a second.

Though most information about the project itself had gone up with the station's self-destruct, Miranda had been able to retain a great deal of Shepard's personal and personnel files. The Commander would probably be alarmed at the amount of information they had on her…everything from the most minor of vaccination records and police reports to classified Alliance documentation. A human being's entire life in a million varied pieces, it had obsessed Lawson for the duration of the Project…from the moment of Shepard's death until the station had come under attack.

To rebuild the woman, especially her brain, as perfectly as possible required every possible detail, every seemingly insignificant piece of data, every psychological nuance of personality (of which Shepard had plenty) that could be scraped together.

The Project still wasn't over, even though Shepard had been restored. Miranda was almost constantly looking for more, anything that would pinpoint the smallest flaw in what she'd achieved. Most would call her search for complete perfection with Shepard an impossibility and they were probably right. All her research, years of intense study that continued even now…and still, Shepard could surprise her.

Unknown to either woman, Miranda shared Dr. Chakwas's initial impression from back at the maiden launch of the first Normandy, when the crew had been initially formed.

_Shepard shouldn't be possible. Yes, the woman has her psychological quirks, her starkly unresolved anger issues but that's just it…they shouldn't just be quirks. She should be a raving lunatic, or broken so completely as to be utterly non-functional in reality. _

Yet, she wasn't. Or didn't _seem_ like she was. Perhaps therein lay Miranda's hesitancy. Always confident, in control around people, even the most dangerous of criminals, Miranda found it almost impossible to relax around Shepard. Part of her was always in a knot of nervous tension, always wary…as if Shepard were some wild animal that might seem calm and rational at the moment but that also might suddenly turn and maul without the slightest provocation.

That was the crux of her first real disagreement with the Illusive Man. Shepard was a walking time bomb, both mentally and emotionally. Being a marine alone, actually dying in the field, she most certainly suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder…a condition so common among military combat forces most soldiers referred to it as SSDD instead of PTSD: Same Shit Different Day.

On top of that there were signs she had some form of borderline personality disorder and was possibly a self-controlling psychotic…no doubt stemming from her overwhelming childhood trauma.

Miranda selected a file on her console and opened it. There were photographs along with the archived text story. The pictures showed a room, perhaps fifteen by twenty. It was a small room in a larger 'Home Again' building in the deepest slums of New York.

The Home Again project was created by the US government some forty years before. Government subsidized but privately owned buildings were doled out to the homeless, each qualifying individual or family getting a single room within a larger structure. While the project may have had idealistic origins all it had done was move the outside homeless situation inside…into cramped, diseased, vermin-infested hot-boxes.

This particular room was assigned to a Baethan Torrfield and his common-law wife, Jaia. Baethan was the uneducated, bullying spawn of a family just one step above those slums…a common street-thug, drunk, and drug addict. Jaia was no better, often whoring herself out as well for what credits she could get…sometimes at Baethan's direction.

The room had no furniture save an old greasy console that barely worked, a cracked and malfunctioning toilet parked in one corner, and a broken down old sofa. In the photos, the room was strewn with debris and filth, accumulated beer bottles, scattered cigarette butts, overflowing filth, waste, litter and refuse of every imaginable kind. In the text, it said the smell in the room was so overwhelming that the super and initial police response team had vomited upon entry and had to retreat and wait for proper re-breathers.

They were crime scene photos. Jaia was dead upon the sofa, bloated and grotesque, flies coating her eyes. Baethan was on the floor, the congealed mess of brains removed by the pistol in his right hand clotted nearby. He was similarly bloated, the couple having died within an hour of one another and having been left unknown for three days of summer heat before the super had broken in the door due to the overwhelming smell.

In the report it described how, when the super had forced the door open, he had thought there was some kind of animal inside, a pet or a stray that had been drawn through some pipe or crack in the wall by the smell. It wasn't until the thing managed to dart past him and out into the hall that he realized it was an actual child.

It was Shepard. She would have been six years old, and every moment of her life had been spent in that miserable, smelly little room. There wasn't even a window. The girl had never know fresh air, sunlight…or that anything at all existed beyond those four walls.

Miranda fancied that was what had sent her to take to the ventilation systems to begin with. She could imagine that frightened girl rushing through unfamiliar halls, consumed only with the instinctive urge to get away. She could picture her somehow making her way outside and seeing that sun for the first time. Bright, painful…it had probably terrified her, and she'd mindlessly sought out the nearest avenue of escape to flee from it.

Six years old. Miranda couldn't imagine spending five minutes in that room, with those people. Six years and the child had survived by feasting on the detritus left behind by the couple, gaining water most likely only by condensation that formed on pipes or, when she was old enough to lift it, from the toilet tank itself. The child had been born in that mess. Once she was crawling she had probably never been lifted or held, never hugged or kissed. She was spoken to only to be screamed at, threatened. She probably learned to speak at all simply by hearing the couple argue and shout at each other.

Switching off the unpleasant images, Miranda drew up instead the vid of Shepard being brought into the institute for the first time, meeting and talking with Nancy Salgado after being delivered by a pair of unfeeling policemen. Here is where a small, niggling puzzle had started…one Miranda had never been able to solve.

Her name.

Shepard had a pair of arrests previous to the one that landed her in the institute. Each time, when severely pressed, she had given her name as Delilah Spruce Shepard…a name she even now hated with a passion, much preferring to go simply by Shepard or, if you were granted her particular favor, you might get away with calling her Del.

Thing was, the couple in the room were called Torrfield. Given the level of their degradation and neglect, Miranda highly doubted they had even _bothered_ to name their unexpected and unwanted offspring. They certainly hadn't filed any sort of birth certification. If they had, the judge would have taken one look at their living conditions and Shepard would have been in the social services system before her umbilical cord had a chance to shrivel.

So where had the name come from? Had Shepard picked it herself, and if so…why would she pick a name she disliked so intensely? There was no birth certification for anyone named Delilah Spruce Shepard, anywhere in the entire state of New York for the last one hundred fifty years. A few Delilah Shepards perhaps but the middle name 'Spruce' was fairly unusual, and should stand out…yet Miranda couldn't find a single reference before the girl's first arrest record.

One thing she did know for certain: Jaia was Shepard's mother, but Baethan was _not_ Shepard's father. The military did full genetic testing on every applicant and could trace their race history with remarkable acuity. Shepard's genetic history from that test and from the ones Miranda had performed herself revealed her to be predominantly Native American, mostly from the Choctaw tribe. As well she had small scatterings of English, Welsh and Scandinavian blood.

Jaia's family were all mostly Choctaw, Jaia's biological father being mixed with Norwegian. But Baethan's family all came from Madagascar and New Zealand…not a single marker of which showed in Shepard's blood.

Shepard, it seemed, was the product of a 'business exchange' drawn out by Jaia's need for booze or drugs, and some nameless, faceless man's available creds.

_I wonder what Earth's ancient forefathers would have thought to know that someday, the greatest hero humanity ever produced would be the product of some junkie's whoring in a back alley._

The name still bothered her. It was unimportant, of course, a non-detail, pointless in the broad scheme of things, but Miranda hated loose ends. She hated questions to which she didn't have the answers. Of course, the solution was simple…simply ask Shepard. The woman remembered back far enough that she could recall the overdose death of her mother, the accidental deranged suicide of the man she thought was her father…certainly she could remember naming herself and why.

Miranda was hesitant to take that tack, however. It seemed like becoming too familiar with the wild animal, and in Shepard's current emotional state…too much temptation toward getting bit.

_This is why T'Soni should be here_, she thought, putting her in mind of her argument with her boss once again.

Shaking her head she closed out the vid and all her old files on Shepard, turning her attention instead toward the woman's computer files and email.

Part of Miranda's job on the _Normandy_ was surveillance. Cerberus might be far more permissive in some areas than the Alliance…allowing greater free reign toward project goals, for example, or turning a blind eye toward fraternization between crew-mates, but it all came at a price. For a mission as important as this one, the price was quite high. Every inch of the ship save the lavs were under constant vid and audio surveillance. Miranda had access to every moment of tape and could call up any section of the ship at any time. All of the surveillance was forwarded on to Cerberus where it was scanned and archived.

But the monitoring wasn't just limited to picture and audio. She was also the only one on board that had full computer access. She could open anyone's files and emails at any time, including Shepard's. Even if said files were on OSD, the computers were designed to capture a copy of anything that passed into their ports, the copies automatically sent to Miranda's console.

Shepard had not proven, so far, to be big on extranet access or computer use. Unlike Joker, whose net history was at times amusing and at other times vaguely disturbing, Shepard had no recreational access whatsoever, much preferring to spend down time in her tiny gym hitting things rather than playing mindless online games or surfing porn.

Her personal files, however, were another thing altogether.

She had three files of note that Miranda was able to pull. Firstly, there was the doctored information on Liara T'Soni's movements since the _Normandy's_ destruction that the Illusive Man had provided…and oddly enough, according to the log, Shepard hadn't even bothered accessing yet.

Secondly there was another file labeled simply _Tianl__á__n_…Shepard had accessed _that_ four times in the last three hours, the first time very shortly after they had returned from Zorya. With her specialized access Miranda could see from the encryption key that it had come from Cerberus as well, though anyone else trying to hack the system or trace its origin would have found that information difficult if not impossible to come by.

Thirdly, there was an OSD ghost capture, from a disc Shepard had inserted and opened once several days ago.

More curious about the Tianlán file from Cerberus, Miranda opened it and watched in silence as Liara's message played, her slim dark brows knitting as it did.

It took no hard guessing to know that the message was coerced or an outright fake. Even without her previous conversation with her boss, the fact that it came from Cerberus and not some external location, and the fact Liara claimed to be working for the Shadow Broker which Miranda well knew was an outright lie, was more than evidence enough for her.

Either the Illusive Man had swung some mighty threat over T'Soni's head…and it would have to be mighty indeed for her to go along so convincingly…or else this was a complete fabrication, concocted and conducted and spun by the spin doctor himself.

Closing the file she selected the OSD ghost capture, surprised to see it was a historic call log. She remembered the OSD that Shepard had picked up at Nancy Salgado's house…clearly, this was it. Out of curiosity she opened one or two calls that Shepard herself had accessed, watching the conversations with a mix of sympathy and curious amusement, before she noticed the last file. Made a year to the day after Shepard's death, it could not have been a call including her.

Shepard had also opened it, but had stopped access just a few minutes in, less than halfway through the call. Pursing her lips, Miranda opened it as well, watching as the conversation unfolded between Liara and Nancy, lamenting first the anniversary and then briefly devolving into polite conversation.

As she approached the mark where Shepard had closed the file, she leaned forward a little and let the call play to its conclusion.

"_Listen to me, going on like this," Nancy finally said. "How has your own work been going, dear? You don't look like you have been sleeping."_

"_I…am all right," Liara murmured, clearly no better of a liar than she had ever been. "Work is steady enough. I have been keeping myself busy. It is just with…this anniversary today and…and Feron. I just feel as if I am letting him down, just as I let Shepard down."_

"_Letting her down? Oh, sweetie…you haven't let her down! You have done more for her than anyone could, more than anyone could even dream was possible!"_

"_Have I? I let my…my grief get in the way of rationality, Nan. I missed her so much, I had to take any chance I could to bring her back. Even the hope of…"_

"_I know," Nancy said gently. "I pray every night for it, Liara. I get down on my knees every night and pray that they're successful, that they can bring her back like they said. I know the horrible things those people have done and yet…I can't let go of hope."_

"_What if it works? What if she hates me for giving her over to them?" Liara whispered sadly. _

"_Hate you? Del? That's not possible," Nancy scoffed gently. "I'll make you a bet, sweetheart. I will wager that if Cerberus is successful…if they bring back our Del again, just as she was…the first thing she'll do when she opens her eyes is ask where you are. Even before she asks for a whiskey and a smoke."_

_Liara gave a weak, sad little laugh at that, shaking her head a little. "It's kind of you to say…"_

"_It's the truth. She'll ask for you and she won't stop until she knows you're ok. That's just Del, darling. As for Cerberus, well…they'll have to have their tap shoes on because it will take a great deal of dancing if they think they can even hope to manipulate her to their use. Del doesn't take pushing, she _pushes_. She'll either leave them in the dust or else have the whole damn place working for her in the end. She'll get the job done and then they won't see her for dust, you'd better believe it."_

_Liara nodded. "Thank you, Nan. And thank you for your prayers. It is impossible to know for certain what will happen, if they will even be able to do what they claim but…since we cannot know one way or another, we may as well believe the outcome that brings us hope, instead of fear the one that does not."_

"_That's exactly right," Nan replied. "I'd best let you get some rest, hon. You look about worn out. Let me know if you hear anything, about Del or that drell that helped you out. You all will be in my thoughts."_

"_Thank you Nan. I will. Pleasant dreams. Good-bye."_

The call ended, Miranda sitting back, her blue eyes weighty with her thoughts.

Shepard had not seen the entire call, not yet. She'd turned it off at a critical juncture. Had she listened to the rest of it than she would have known instantly that the message supposedly sent by Liara was a total fabrication. She still would, if she somehow returned and watched the entire call.

Miranda had access to a program command in the computer system that she could alter to target the OSD's particular data signature. If she put it into effect, the moment Shepard slid that OSD back into her console the data signature would prompt a complete, immediate, and permanent wipe of the data recorded on it, instantly. The OSD would be useless, the phone calls gone forever. Shepard would never see the rest of that call.

As she pondered, EDI's voice chimed in as the holographic orb appeared over her desk. "Course change has been laid in and activated. We are on a new course heading."

"Location?" Miranda asked.

"We are heading to the Citadel," EDI replied.

"Where is Shepard now?" Miranda asked, standing up and striding back to her bedroom, slipping off her robe as she did so and gathering a uniform to dress.

"She is in the CIC."

* * *

><p>Showered, changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a button down shirt, Shepard stood over the galaxy map in the CIC, leaning on the rail and regarding the slowly swirling holographic interface with intensity. Her brown eyes reflected the miniscule stars and swirling colors of infinitesimal nebulae as if seeking answers in their shifting patterns.<p>

_{ETA to the Citadel, four hours,}_ Joker reported from the helm. Nearby, Kelly was watching the Commander with scrutiny.

The redhead glanced over at the lift as Miranda appeared, the brunette XO glancing at the yeoman a moment before drawing to a halt below the navigation dais. "Commander?"

"Miranda," Shepard replied, straightening. She turned and stepped down from the dais.

"We're heading to the Citadel?" Miranda hedged gently.

"Yes. One of the dossiers I selected was for a Kasumi Goto. Contact information is listed only as 'Citadel' so we're heading that direction. If you don't mind, see if you can't get a more precise address than that."

"I will do so, of course," Miranda replied. She could feel that tension inside again, as she always did when talking to the Commander…though it seemed stronger right now. Shepard was calm, collected…should she _be_ so calm and collected after seeing that message from T'Soni? She'd watched it four times. Miranda would have expected Shepard to be in her gym, hitting things…or doing her best to get drunk, not acting calm and professional.

"Something wrong?" Shepard asked. Miranda was excellent at schooling her expressions but her tension was showing in her stance.

"I just hope you're prepared for this, Shepard," she answered. "Once we go to the Citadel your identity will be known. The Alliance, the Council, they will all know you're alive. The Alliance can't arrest you on Citadel grounds but that door will be open. Once word gets out you will likely be swarmed with reporters, questions…"

"It'll be a circus, I know," Shepard answered. "But I can't hide forever, and we need Goto."

"Understood. It's your call, Commander."

"I appreciate the concern, Miranda, but it'll be fine. Honestly, I hope I get to see the look on the Council's faces when they see I'm not dead."

And Shepard smiled. Actually, rather warmly, _smiled_.

Miranda had never thought a simple smile could make her worry so much.

* * *

><p>Unlike the Alliance, Cerberus did not have private, secure docks. The SR2 slid into one of the numerous public docks and locked down without incident. Garrus, finally and officially cleared by Chakwas for duty, stepped out of the airlock behind Shepard and squinted a little at the bright light.<p>

"Never thought I'd be back here," he said, looking down at the much smaller human woman. "At least not any time soon."

"Yeah, me neither," she murmured.

As they were on the Citadel, Shepard was not in a hard-suit. She had found before that, no matter how often her face was plastered around posters and vids, so long as she dressed in civvies people found it hard to recognize her. So she wore her jeans, her new boots and swagman, and a button down shirt over a tank. She was armed with her knife and her machine pistols on her hips, her still as-yet-uncut hair pulled back from her face in a tail.

She couldn't go completely incognito, of course. Security scans and facial recognition programs that were in everything from sanctioned C-Sec check-points to the power ads designed to personalize themselves to everyone who approached would very quickly alert C-Sec, the Council, and anyone in authority that a dead woman walked their halls.

But, hopefully, between the hat and the hair the regular populous and the vulture-like media wouldn't have a goddamn chance in hell of recognizing her by sheer accident.

She'd brought only Garrus along on purpose. She wasn't ready yet to risk Zaeed, and bringing along actual uniformed Cerberus personnel wasn't a wise idea either at the moment. Garrus was a friend, ex-C-Sec, and she could trust him. Right now, she needed that trust…and she needed his ear away from the _Normandy_.

As they entered the lift to exit the docks, Shepard plucked a pair of cigars from her pocket. Lighting one, she tucked the other behind her ear.

"Miranda wasn't able to find any specific location for Goto," she said as she exhaled. "Not surprising, the woman's supposed to be good at hiding, some kind of thief. Lawson was able to get a message to her contacts, though, so hopefully she'll find us."

"So we just…wander around until she makes herself known?" Garrus asked.

"Something like that, yeah. I want to see if I can't get in to talk to Anderson as well."

"Right off the bat, hmm?"

"Council's going to know I'm here within an hour," she nodded. "I might as well. I owe it to the man, anyway, and if we're going to get any kind of ally on the Council or with the Alliance here, it's going to be him."

"Sounds good," he agreed as the lift opened. They stepped out and stopped. The turian blinked a little.

"That's…new."

The entire main docking floor was sealed off from the rest of the station by huge C-Sec checkpoints. Officers were clearing everyone through weapons and identity scans before allowing them into the station itself.

"Guess word's going to be out quicker than I thought," Shepard murmured. "Wonder why the hell they put this shit up."

Though the line markers were clearly designed to handle large crews, they seemed to have come during a slow period. The pair only had to wait for one rather grumpy turian to finally clear through and exit, before it was their turn.

The officer that looked up at them looked bored, and tired. Seeing the pistols on Shepard's hips she said, "Sorry, civilians are not allowed to carry weapons aboard the station without a permit. If you don't have a permit you must surrender any weapons you may be carrying, including biotic amps."

"Hmm," Shepard replied, making no move to unship her pistols. "Wasn't like that the last time I came through here. What changed?"

"The Council implemented some security reforms after the geth attack," the agent replied. "These measures have been put into place to prevent another synthetic incursion. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Shepard stared at her a moment, then spoke slowly. "So…all this is to make sure the geth don't attack again."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Geth that got onto the station through means other than the docking bays."

"We cannot assume they will always use the same method," she answered with a frustrated roll of her eyes. "We have to be prepared for every contingency."

"Even interrogating organics that are clearly not even _close_ to geth?"

"I cannot make that assumption, ma'am."

"…that I'm not geth?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Uh huh." Shepard looked at Garrus with a 'can you believe this shit?' expression on her face, then back at the agent.

"Well, I'm a Spectre. They're allowed to carry weapons, aren't they?"

"Certainly," she answered with a smile. "However there are no human Spectres at this time."

Shepard took her cigar out of her mouth, casually leaning on the counter. "How about you scan me, and find out, hmm?"

"I would be happy to do so," the agent replied. "But I should warn you, the penalty for impersonating a Council Spectre in an attempt to bypass security protocols is quite strict."

When Shepard didn't budge, she gestured to the scanner port on the front of the desk. "If you'll look directly at the blue light please?"

Shepard straightened, doing as she was bid. The scan flashed, then beeped. The agent looked at her read-out, and then stiffened a little. "Umm…just one moment, ma'am."

"Take your time," Shepard smirked, lifting the stogie to her lips again. The agent made a selection on her console, and a moment later Shepard heard footsteps, then the ratchet of guns. She turned her head to see three C-Sec officers with rifles pointed directly at their faces.

"No fast moves, ma'am," the one in the lead told her, then glanced at Garrus. "If you would please follow us. You too sir."

Obediently the two followed the trio past the check-point and in through a door to the actual C-Sec check-station. A dozen officers were working, led it seemed by a haggard man at a desk. He looked up as they walked in, scrutinizing her face a moment before dismissing the trio with a jerk of his chin.

"So, little problem with the scanners," he said cheerfully enough. "They seem to think you're dead, Commander Shepard."

"Yeah, fancy that," she said dryly.

"Indeed. How 'bout I fix that for you?"

This surprised her. "That easily?"

"Well, normally it'd be a mess and a half, take you days and goddamn endless piles of paperwork but…well, you clearly have things to do, and so do I. So, I put you back in the system, the scanners all realize you're alive and a Spectre, and life gets easier all around."

She narrowed her eyes a little. "What's the catch?"

"No catch," he said. "I hate needless entanglements, and that's what this is. Besides, you're the Hero of the Citadel. I think a button-push is the least anyone can do for you."

"Uh…well, thanks….?"

"Bailey," he supplied. "There, done. You're all back in the system. You might want to go and speak to the Council though. I put your clearance back on the level it was, but it's up to them if it actually stays at Spectre status. Be more headache than it's worth if they find out the hard way you're running around again and didn't let them know."

"That was surprising," Garrus said as they left the check-point and moved into the station proper.

"Seemed a bit easy, didn't it?" Shepard agreed.

"Indeed. 'Entanglements' where you're concerned usually are resolved with less politeness…and a lot more bleeding."

Shepard snorted a laugh. "Too true, my friend. Bailey didn't seem to recognize you."

"Nah, don't know him. He was probably assigned to an entirely different section than I was, or a different department. I'd say he may have been hired on after I left but he's a captain, and seems to old hat to have only been here two years."

"Yeah. At least he had his head on straight. I-"

"_Commander Shepard, enter the password and win a prize!"_

Shepard only glanced at the power ad that suddenly spoke her name because she was surprised. _Didn't take long for Bailey's clearances to go through if even the ads recognize me now_, was her thought.

Her glance lingered, however, because of the content of the ad. A woman's face, half pretty enough but half shrouded with a hood, hovered above a bright neon background that had scrolling Chinese characters. They read, 'Goto's Guaranteed Pick-Me-Up!'

Touching Garrus's arm to halt him she inclined her head, moving closer to the ad.

"_Speak the password and you could be the next lucky winner!" _the ad declared.

"Iftah ya simsim," Shepard smirked around her nearly depleted stogie, folding her arms.

"_Classic literature, nice,"_ the ad replied with a smile_. "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, very to meet you, Commander Shepard. Kasumi Goto, as I'm sure you have already concluded."_

"Nice touch using a power ad, and Chinese characters, especially since you're Japanese."

"_I thought Chinese would appeal to you more, given your personal history, Shepard. Who knows? Perhaps by the time we're done working together, I'll have you swearing in Nihongo as well as Mandarin."_

"Well, I do like to embrace a wide variety of foul-language and colorful metaphors. I'm pan-cultural in that respect," Shepard smirked. "So, Ms. Goto-"

"_Kasumi, please."_

"Kasumi then. I'm Shepard. I hear you're very good at what you do."

"_I'm the best thief in the business, Shepard, not the most famous, and I've worked hard to keep it that way. I don't have so much as a parking ticket. Cerberus's message indicated you had a mission you need my help on…something no doubt desperate and galaxy-saving…very adventurous. Just my cup of tea. I must say, however, I am surprised Cerberus suggested me. We're hardly the best of friends. I've…liberated some things from them in the past."_

"That's exactly why I picked you," Shepard said. "I need the top agents in their fields, and ones that dislike Cerberus are a fucking bonus in my book."

"_Interesting that you'd be working with them and yet despise them," _Kasumi mused. _"What does this mission entail?"_

"I'd rather not go into too much detail while standing here at a public power ad," Shepard told her. "We're addressing the issue of the missing human colonies, and it will be extremely dangerous. I can fill you in on the rest someplace a bit more…discreet."

"_Understood, Commander. Well, my senses are all tingling. I'll tell you what. I'll meet you in person aboard the _Normandy _and we can discuss the details of both mission and payment."_

"Cerberus will front any amount of creds that you need-"

"_Oh, I don't need credits, Commander. What I need is a favor…one only someone like you could pull off. But we can talk that over later. I have already snuck my belongings aboard your ship. I will see you there when your business on the Citadel is complete. You might want to stop talking to a power ad now, you look a little crazy."_

The girl gave a wink before the ad flared with a micro-instant of static and returned to its normal operation.

"I like her," Garrus commented as they turned away from the ad terminal.

"If nothing else she made herself a thorn in Cerberus's side," Shepard smirked. "I like her too."


	16. Chapter 16

Crossing the Presidium, Shepard could see where the repairs from the geth attack were still on-going. She had expected the Citadel to be less crowded than before but if anything, the opposite was true. Everywhere was a riot of color and noise.

"Well, at least they're displaying some amount of sense," she said as she touched Garrus's shoulder, then pointed. The 'statue' of a mass relay, which was actually a working unit that formed a back door onto the Citadel from Ilos, was secure under an energy field, and patrolled by a couple of C-Sec agents. Mass relays could not be destroyed and this one apparently could not be physically moved, but at least they'd taken _some_ measure to keep it secure. Anyone who tried to pass through it from Ilos would be instantly obliterated by the field.

Guards also stood at the entrance to the lift for the Council tower, one turian holding up his hand as she and Garrus approached.

"This section is off-limits to civilians without a clearance permit," he told her.

"We're here to see Councilor Anderson," she replied. He half glanced at a data pad in his hand, then shook his head. "Councilor Anderson is in meetings all day, he has no personal appointments. You will have to contact his offices and set an appointment."

"I'm pretty sure he'll see me," she said, folding her arms.

"Everyone says that," he answered tiredly. "_Unless_ you have an appointment-"

"Look, I know you're just doing your job, but I guaran-fucking-_tee_ it that if you send up my name Anderson will see me," she told him. "Five seconds of your time. Send up my name. See what happens."

With a snort of frustration he shook his head, tapping into his data pad. "Fine. Have it your way. But I'm not taking the heat for annoying the Councilor during a meeting. Name?"

"Commander Del Shepard," she replied. The turian guard started to type it in, then paused, blinking at her.

"Uh…"

"Yeah," Garrus told him. "_That_ Commander Shepard."

"I'm…sorry? I thought you were…well, I thought Commander Shepard was dead," he answered.

"So, tell him Commander Shepard's _undead corpse_ is here to see him," she joked. "Don't worry, the politicians up there are safe…there's hardly a zombie-snack between the lot of them."

The turian scowled a little, but the twitching of his mandibles gave away his confused fluster. He sent the name up. A few moments later, he half ducked his head, touching his ear bud.

"Yes, sir? Yes, sir, I'm looking right at her sir. I'm not sure…she looks like a civvie to me. Uh…what? Yeah, ok…umm…dark hair, brown eyes…she's wearing boots, a weird sort of hat, a blue button shirt and genetics. What? Oh. Oh yes, that's right. _Jeans_, not genetics….is she _what_?"

As he blinked, puzzled, Shepard pulled the cigar from behind her ear and waved it in her fingers, before slipping it back. "Uh…not at the moment but she just waved one at me, a cigar….yes, sir. Right away sir."

Turning he punched a code into a console, summoning the elevator. "Councilor Anderson wants you both to come up immediately," he said. As the lift arrived, the doors parting, she started to step past. The turian cleared his throat, half-holding out his hand.

"Are…you _really_ Commander Shepard?" he asked as she paused and looked at him. She only grinned and winked, before continuing on her way and entering the lift.

As the lift started up the tower, Shepard let out a breath. "Fuck. That is going to get old _really_ fast."

"Price you pay for being a dead hero," Garrus replied. She rolled her eyes at him, regarding the view past the glass back of the lift.

The last time she'd been in here, she'd broken that glass, running up the side of the tower itself after Saren locked down the elevators. Sovereign had been there, then…clinging to the tower spire like some kind of spider clinging to a twig. It seemed surreal to be here now.

"Garrus, when we're done talking with Anderson, before we head back aboard the _Normandy_, you and I are going to go shopping."

He raised a brow. "Shopping?"

"Yeah. You know, couple girls out on the strip…it'll be fun. Maybe we'll get our nails done," she teased.

"Now I'm _certain_ Cerberus didn't put your brain back in the right way," he replied with a chuckle. Shepard grinned, then shook her head, her levity swiftly replaced by seriousness.

"No, in all honesty, I _really_ need to talk to you off the ship. Until Tali joins up you're the only one I really trust, and I'd be a fucking idiot if I didn't think Cerberus has the SR2 bugged twelve ways to Sunday, dong ma?"

"Of course, Shepard," he replied. "Anything you need."

"You're a good guy, Garrus. I'm glad you're here."

"I'm glad I'm here too. At least, until the next explosion," he teased.

A moment later the lift drew to a halt. The doors parted, instantly baring a familiar face.

Anderson stood there, looking as though the last two years had never happened. His Alliance uniform had been replaced by a tailored suit befitting his new station but beyond that, it was as if he had never stepped off the _Normandy_.

For a moment, the pair simply stood there, silently measuring the other. Behind his stern expression, Shepard could see the stirrings of emotion, and his voice was low when he finally spoke. "My God, Del…is that really you?"

"Lookin' sharp, Cap," she replied back with a faint grin. "Fuckin' blue blazes all to goddamn hell, you're a sight for sore eyes."

He reached out, and the pair clasped hands a moment before he drew her into a hug. "Clearly," he said as he released her, "we have a lot to talk about. Come, let's speak in my office. Good to see you again too, Garrus."

"Same, Captain," Garrus replied with a polite nod.

As they left the lift, Shepard couldn't help looking around the main chamber. She, Liara, Ash and Garrus all had nearly died here. The grand windows had been restored, sealing out the vacuum of the nebula again, but several walls and part of the stairs were still being repaired.

Seeing her gaze Anderson smirked. "They project another six months before full restoration is complete," he told her. "When you make a mess, Shepard, you definitely make a _mess_."

"You know me, sir," she grinned. "I don't do anything half-assed."

He ushered them into his office, a grand room twice the size that Udina's office had been, back when this whole disaster had begun. The view was nothing less than spectacular, the décor tasteful and well-appointed.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" Anderson asked, already striding toward a liquor service.

"Couple shots of cheap Jack?" she asked. He smiled, already pouring.

"How about some brandy…it's about all I have. Serrice Ice?"

"Works for me," she smiled, then nodded as he handed her the glass. "Thank you."

"Garrus? Anything?"

"No, thank you."

Anderson poured himself a dose as well, then recapped the bottle. He gestured at them to sit, before taking a seat himself, looking at her intently.

"I still can't believe it's really you," he murmured. "We heard rumors, this past few weeks…nothing but murmurings from Omega and out in the Traverse. I didn't want to believe them, but…here you are. Sitting right in front of me. What _happened_, Shepard?"

Looking into the depths of the brandy she held in her hands, Shepard told him more or less everything. She told him what she recalled of the _Normandy_'s demise, about waking up on that strange station with no memory of how she'd gotten there, no knowledge of what was happening. She told him about finding out that she had died, that Cerberus had brought her back.

It wasn't until she mentioned Freedom's Progress that she finally halted, lifting that glass and taking a healthy mouthful of brandy.

"_Cerberus_, Shepard…" Anderson murmured with worried concern. "I don't understand. Even if they did bring you back, they're a terrorist organization. You know that, you know what they've done. It was not under your control what happened before you woke, but afterward…why did you not come back to the Alliance immediately? Contact us somehow?"

"And what would have happened?" Shepard asked him, meeting his eyes. "If I'd called you, or Hackett, or anyone in the brass. If I'd just shown back up in Alliance space, declared myself at the nearest outpost…what would have happened?"

"I won't lie to you, Shepard. There would have been a lot of questions. You'd have been detained, debriefed, examined thoroughly. Hackett and I would have pulled for you. Hell, Fleet Master Barrett would have pulled for you."

She blinked. "Jack Barrett is Fleet Master now? Fuck me…"

"There have been a few changes since you…_left_," Anderson nodded. "My point is, you'd have had allies. We would have gotten you cleared, back in the fight, reinstated as a Spectre. You-"

"After _how long_?" she asked. "I _wanted_ to come back, sir. Good men and women died because of Cerberus. My _friends_ nearly died because of them, and that's not counting all the other sick bullshit they've pulled across the galaxy. I _wanted_ to come back home, but _Nancy_ is missing! She was taken from Freedom's Progress by the Collectors, along with all the other colonists. I had to make a choice…spend six months tied up in red-tape, stuck under a fucking microscope and helpless while God knows _what_ happens to her…or I could take the resources handed to me on a platter and go after her _immediately_. Captain, as far as I'm concerned, Cerberus can go fuck themselves. I don't answer to them. It's a tentative peace between us at the moment and it's only going to last so long as it takes me to stop the abductions and get Nancy back safe. After that they can kiss my trillion-dollar ass."

Anderson nodded and sighed, wiping a hand over his face as he sat back. "I understand, Shepard. I do. But this puts me and the Alliance in a very bad spot. People aren't going to understand that. They're going to see you as a defector, someone who faked their death to go work with terrorists."

"Since when do I give a fuck how people see me?"

"I know, but you have to understand…my hands are tied. I won't be able to help you, Shepard. Even if I had information that might aide what you're doing I can't pass it along to you…not if there's a chance the wrong information will land in Cerberus hands. Not to mention the entire organization is an avowed enemy of the Citadel Council. That doesn't just make what you're doing questionable, that makes it _treason_. I'm on the Council but if the other three want to pursue this I won't be able to stop them. You'll be a fugitive at best."

"I faced that choice when I stole the _Normandy_ to go to Ilos, remember?" she asked. "My position hasn't changed. I will sacrifice _anything_ to protect the people I'm _sworn_ to protect. My life, my reputation, my career…doesn't matter. I was willing to face a firing squad back _then_ to stop Saren and I'm willing to do the same _now_ to stop the Collectors and the Reapers from wiping out all civilized life in this galaxy."

He searched her face, before he shook his head. "You really haven't changed a bit, have you?" he asked. "All right, Shepard. I have a meeting with the rest of the Council in a few minutes. Why don't you come with me? We'll spring all of this on their various crested heads and see what we can't work out."

"Thank you, Captain. This…means more to me than you could know."

"After all we've been through, Shepard, I think it's all right if you call me David instead of Captain."

* * *

><p>Anderson didn't, of course, spring her return blind on the other Councilors. He called them ahead of time, warning them that he'd be bringing her. Their scoffing disbelief only changed the moment Shepard actually walked into the meeting behind him, the trio exchanging surprised and troubled looks.<p>

The turian looked downright _pissed_.

For a time, things only went downhill, devolving into demands for explanations, hot accusations of rumor regarding her activities in the Traverse and her association with Cerberus, and then angry disbelief when the rumors were verified.

"You _do_ realize that by working for Cerberus, you're committing treason against this Council and Citadel space," Tevos wanted to know. "It's a capital offense, Shepard."

"I'm aware that is how _you_ see it," Shepard replied. "But I am _not_ working _for_ Cerberus. They are working for _me_. I haven't joined up, haven't so much as even put on their goddamn uniform. You give me a Citadel ship and the resources I need to take this fight to the Collectors and stop these abductions and not only will I drop Cerberus like a hot fucking potato, I'll find a way to lead you to the Illusive Man's goddamn doorstep."

"At least your sense of dramatics and hysterics has not waned," the turian snorted. "We cannot commit a ship and so many resources over this, Shepard. A Citadel operation entering the Traverse would cause more political blowback than you can imagine and we are not willing to go to war over your _hunch_ that the Collectors are the ones abducting these few human colonies-"

"_Hunch_? I have evidence of my 'hunch' on vid, Councilor-"

"No, _Cerberus_ does," he retorted. "Evidence that could be doctored, manipulated…just as _you_ are being manipulated…_again_."

Her eyes narrowed. "This old song and dance?" she asked angrily. "I tried to tell you the threat that Saren posed, and you didn't believe me. I tried to warn you about the Conduit, you didn't think it important. I tried to prevent this Citadel from coming under geth attack and you _ignored me_. I saved your _goddamn fucking lives_-"

"If I remember correctly, Shepard," the salarian said sarcastically. "You told us yourself you did it to save the _other_ lives aboard the _Ascension_, not ours."

"The fucking point is I was _right_, and _you_ ignored me. And now you're doing it again. I was right about Saren and the geth. I was right about the attack. I was right about the Reap-"

"Not that Reaper drivel _again_," the turian glowered. "A fleet of monster sentient warships lurking in dark space hoping to wipe us all out…_puh_. We have dismissed that claim."

"Are you _serious_?" Shepard stared, unable to believe what she was hearing. "You _still_ think Reapers are imaginary? Go to Ilos and talk to Vigil! Examine the remains of Sovereign, I'm sure that-"

"Shepard," Anderson interrupted gently. "The AI on Ilos is non-functional, and it was only you and your crew that ever spoke with Sovereign."

"We found nothing in the remains of that dreadnought that suggested it was anything but geth-make," Tevos informed her. "Their technology is very advanced. There is nothing to support your story of the Reapers, Commander."

"I can't believe I'm fucking _listening_ to this," Shepard gaped.

"Anderson, the Alliance is conducting its own investigation into your missing colonies, is it not?" Tevos asked.

"Yes, of course," he said. "Listen…I think we all need to calm down and think this over rationally. Whatever else you may believe, Shepard is a hero. She saved your lives and saved the Citadel. She has halted several threats to Council space including a tank-bred krogan army that would have been under the command of a rogue Spectre. At the very least, she should be reinstated to her Spectre status, allowed to pursue her investigation of these missing colonies."

"As part of Cerberus," the turian snorted.

"I am _not_ part of Cerberus," Shepard spat angrily.

Tevos exchanged a look with the salarian, then nodded. "I believe Councilor Anderson has a point. Shepard, in light of your service to the Citadel we might be willing to drop the charge of treason and reinstate you to Spectre status."

"I don't believe this," the turian groaned.

"What's the catch?" Shepard asked warily.

"The 'catch' would be that you maintain a low profile, confine your activities to the Traverse until this mission is concluded. Once you are no longer associated with Cerberus in any way, we might consider allowing your full duties to continue in Citadel space. However, were you to remain with Cerberus _after _your mission we would consider that a full declaration of treason and would remove your status and address the matter to the full extent of the law."

"No fucking danger of _that_," Shepard huffed, folding her arms.

"I object to this! She should be arrested right now," the turian retorted. Tevos lifted a brow at him, then nodded.

"To a full vote then," she said calmly. "All in favor of the pardon and reinstatement of Commander Shepard to Special Tactics and Reconnaissance under the guidelines earlier mentioned?"

Three hands lifted. The turian's look only darkened.

"Fine. She will be reinstated. But my objection stands."

"Noted," Tevos nodded. "Shepard, your rights and privileges as a Council Spectre have been restored to you. Limit your activities to the Traverse and at the successful conclusion of your mission regarding the colonists, return with a full report and we will consider lifting your restrictions at that time."

Shepard only inclined her head in commiseration, unable to bring herself to demonstrate any form of verbal gratitude. She didn't think she'd ever be able to thank the Council for _anything_, any more.

"Very well," Tevos concluded. "Anderson, we will entertain a five minute break while you make your farewells to Commander Shepard, and then we will resume our business."

As Shepard and Anderson stepped out, the latter let out a heavy breath. "Sorry, I know that was a disaster."

"So long as they let me find our missing people I couldn't give a fuck what else they say," Shepard replied. "Thank you, Ca-…David. God, that sounds weird, doesn't it? How about I just call you Anderson?"

"Fine by me," he smiled. "You go out there and fight the good fight, Shepard."

"I always do," she replied. "Before I go, I did want to ask one more thing. Ash…Chief Williams. Have you heard anything about her? She doing ok?"

"Chief Williams is doing fine, Shepard," he told her. "She's on assignment right now…classified. I'm sorry, I can't tell you anything more."

Shepard nodded. "I understand. It's just good to hear she's still doing what she loves. Thank you, Anderson. I'll make sure Joker forwards your offices the SR2's idents. Call or message me any time, all right?"

He nodded, then held out his hand again. Shepard ignored it, stepping forward and hugging him tightly. "You take care of yourself, old man," she murmured. "You're the only sanity this place has got."

"That's a scary thought," he chuckled faintly. "Shep... be safe out there. This galaxy needs you around…and so do your friends."

She nodded, then cleared her throat as she released him and stepped back. Giving him a nod and a quick salute, she headed away toward where Garrus stood waiting, having not been allowed into the meeting.

"C'mon, ugly," she grunted at him as he fell into step beside her. "Let's get that drink."

* * *

><p>"So they reinstated your Spectre status," Garrus murmured as they walked through the crowded marketplace, looking for a bar. Along the avenue smells of cooking food from all over the galaxy filtered from every direction, filling the air with an unusual co-mingled aroma. Most of the smells were foreign, food that she'd never be able to eat without serious injury or death. Some downright stank. She thought for sure someone was boiling old gym socks in a pot of lye before Garrus informed her it was a krogan botatur shop…botatur being considered almost something like dessert to the reptilian race.<p>

_Leave it to the krogan to have ice cream shops that smell like fucking sewers,_ she thought as they continued on.

"Yeah, it's something," she said aloud, in response to his comment about her status. "And a fuck of a lot better than being shot for treason. They were all angry over the fact that I was using Cerberus's resources but when I mentioned that _they_ could give me resources _instead_…"

"Let me guess. 'We can't do that. There'll be war. Upheaval. Salarians will start marrying krogan and people won't know their left hands from their right…'"

Shepard chuckled, shaking her head. "Yeah, something like that. Fuckers."

Another smell filled the air, taking dominance over the others. An earthy, dry kind of smell that was rather pungent all the same. Grimacing a little she looked over, expecting to see another food-stand where krogan were cooking sewer slugs or something. Instead she saw a shop that wasn't even remotely related to food.

"Huh. Garrus, one sec. Let's go in here," she directed, before heading that way. He blinked as he followed her.

"Here? What could you want _here_?"

It was a pet store. The shop was lined with cages, enclosures, and displays, each containing something furry, scaly, feathery or leathery. A pair of half-grown turian children were with an older male, each with their arms wrapped around a fuzzy little creature that looked like a cross between a monkey and a cat.

"What's that, Garrus?" Shepard asked. The creatures were cute, their large eyes becoming.

"Tiffle kittens," he told her. "Popular children's pets on Palaven. Very needy, very whiny. I never did like them much. Honestly, Shep…what are we doing here?"

"Just curious. It's interesting to see what other races consider pets…like this. I mean, really?"

She tapped a tank in which rested a thing that looked like a cross between a coconut crab from Earth and a switchblade knife. At her tap it reared up and snarled angrily.

"Don't!" the proprietor warned, coming around the counter after the turian family had gone. "That's a Tuchankan nsark. Very grumpy little things. If you irritate it too much it'll spit all over the glass. The smell is horrible."

"Good to know," Shepard murmured, easing back a little. The proprietor was a salarian, gangly and skinny even for one of that race.

"You know, we do have a few pets from Earth," he said with a grin. "Let me show you."

"Oh, I'm not really in the market," she protested, even as he pulled down a tank.

It was filled with cockroaches. Garrus shook his head. "Those are what humans consider _pets_?" he asked, surprised. "They look like…stumpy little Rachni."

"Hissing roaches from your island of Madagascar," the proprietor touted happily.

"No thank you," Shepard told him. "I have a frigate. Bunch of roaches get loose on board and it'd be chaos."

"Ah, yes, so…hmm," he replaced the tank, crossing the room toward another. "We also have a beautiful variety of poison dart frogs-"

"Poison frogs?" Garrus asked with amusement, looking at Shepard. "Ugly bugs? You humans are weird."

"Yeah, well…at least we don't have fucking needy, whiny, monkey..._things_," she defended.

"If you would like a monkey, we can order you one," the salarian said eagerly, still trying to get the frog tank down. Garrus smirked and Shepard sighed in frustration.

"No, thank you. I don't want a monk-" She broke off as she looked toward the counter, meeting a pair of tiny black eyes. "Well, hello…"

She moved over to the counter, crouching to peer into the cage. The black eyes regarded her calmly, behind a slowly moving nose bristling with hair-fine whiskers. Garrus wandered over to her side, peering at the animal.

"What is that?" he asked.

Reaching out she unhooked the latch on the cage, opening the door and sticking her hand within. As if trained, the creature obediently climbed onto her wrist, then trucked its way up her arm to her shoulder, where it almost politely sat and began to wash its face.

The salarian, unsuccessful with the frogs and noticing what she was doing, came over with a smile. "Yes, _that!_ We ordered a few from Earth directly. The seller assured us that humans would buy them like mad, but it took us six weeks to sell the few we had. More humans seemed repulsed or disgusted by them than attracted. I don't know why, they seem sweet enough to me."

"That's because most people from Earth consider them vermin," she replied, head turned to watch her meticulous little guest, then spoke directly to the animal. "That's all right. Most people consider _me_ vermin too."

"It has a strange tail," Garrus grimaced, then asked again. "What is it?"

"It's a 'rat'," the salarian supplied.

Shepard surprised herself by looking at the man and asking, "How much?"

"Shepard?" Garrus blinked, surprised. She ignored him, watching the salarian.

"For just the animal? Five credits," he said. "If you want the complete set-up it will be fifty credits. I can have it directly delivered to your ship if you would like, no extra charge."

"Yeah, do it," Shepard told him, pulling out her credit chit and dropping it on the counter. "Have the supplies sent to the _Normandy_ in docking bay 452, courtesy of Shepard. This little gal will stay with me."

"I never figured you for a 'pet' kind of person, Shepard," Garrus shook his head. She looked up at him, her new guest still washing, half-watching them with its oil-drop eyes.

"Why not? I have fish, don't I?"

"That Lawson bought," he reminded her. She half shrugged.

"I've never had a pet before," she admitted, turning her attention back to her furry guest. "Rat's just like me. Grew up in vents, crawling through pipes, just trying to survive...unwanted. Besides," she looked at him with a teasing sparkle in her eye. "It'll be nice having someone with some brains onboard to talk to."

"Oh, ha ha," he retorted with a snort. The proprietor finished the transaction and they headed back out of the shop, the rat still perched on Shepard's shoulder, one little pink hand holding on to a loose strand of her hair as it sniffed at all the strange odors that passed by.

They found a bar a few minutes later, and Garrus was sure they were going to get pitched right out again the moment the waitress saw the animal. They didn't, the asari woman barely blinking at the creature as she took their orders. She returned a few moments later with a bowl of algae crisps and a pair of drinks. Taking one of the green crisps Shepard lifted it up to her new friend, who plucked it out of her fingers and began to nibble it daintily.

"She's got better table manners than you too," she winked at Garrus.

"Funny," he smirked, taking a sip of his own drink. "Well, Shep…you wanted to get me alone off-ship, and I'm not fool enough to think it's because of my dashing good looks and infinite charm so…what's on your mind?"

"Cerberus is lying to me," she said casually, drawing out her cigar and lighting it before plucking a few crisps up herself.

"So what else is new?" he asked. When she glared at him he nodded. "You mean about something extremely serious, don't you? What is it?"

"I got a message from Liara," she told him. "Only it's not really from her."

"How do you mean?"

She gestured with the hand holding the cigar, making little swoops and swirls of smoke as she did so. "In the message Liara said, more or less, that she wanted to stay friends but that too much time had passed. She told me she was ok, that she couldn't believe it when the Shadow Broker told her I was still alive and on Omega, that she wasn't ready to see me yet. Then she all but confirmed this goddamn Feron thing."

"Was she upset?" Garrus asked, worried. Liara was his friend, too.

"Crying, a little," she murmured, eyes distant.

"Shepard…I'm sorry," he said gently. She shook her head.

"Don't be. Wasn't her."

Rubbing a hand over his mouth he sighed, then met her eyes. "Shepard, I know this is hard for you…it's a shit deal, from beginning to end, but it _has_ been two years. Wounds heal, and-"

"Garrus, Jesus Fuck…are you even _listening_?" she asked. "It. Was. Not. _Liara_. Give me some credit, please?"

"What makes you think it wasn't her?" he asked.

"Just as I said," she replied. "She said, 'when the Shadow Broker told me you were still alive and on Omega…' Fucking bullshit and a half. Remember those packages I got from her? Anonymous delivery? Yeah, well…I found out Aria sent them. Seems she owed Liara a favor, and Liara had asked her if I ever showed up on Omega to call her and let her know. I heard it from Aria's own mouth. _She_ told Liara I was on Omega, not the Shadow Broker. And Aria arranged the packages on her request. Liara knew I was going to be on Omega at some point, because she already knew I was still alive. That guitar she had commissioned would have taken at least six months to build, not to mention however long it took to get it from…_wherever_ it was to Omega. So she had to know I was alive at least _that_ long, which means she knew I was alive before I even woke the fuck up on Lazarus. This message made it seem like she'd _just_ fucking found out about it. And that wasn't even all of it. I mean, fuck's sake, Garrus! I shared _how many_ knowledge melds with that woman? Spent how long in her company? I can tell the goddamn real thing from a fucking fake, I don't care _how_ convincing they make it. That was fucking _not _my Tianlán."

Now Garrus was concerned, leaning forward a bit. The rat finished its crisp and Shepard almost absently handed it another one. "But why?" he asked. "Why would Cerberus go to such elaborate measures to send such a message? You're talking flawless computer generation or a damned good double…"

"Wasn't a double. My bet is on comp gen," Shepard replied. "I don't know why, but Cerberus wants to keep me away from Liara. I think she's in some kind of trouble, and they're worried I'm going to drop fucking everything to go and help her."

"So what do we do?"

She leaned back a little, taking a thoughtful draw on her stogie, brows knit and jaw tense. "Working on that," she replied. "Right now, I'm just trying to find out where she is. Massani has contacts. He's putting out feelers for me. And this thief we just picked up, Goto…she's hardly on chummy terms with Cerberus and moves in secret circles. She may be able to help me find her, too. For right now, all we can do is wait. I can't let on that I know the truth, Garrus, so we have to be careful on the ship, ok? They want me to forget about her, so as far as they're concerned, I'm going to act like I've done just that. If they suspect I'm still trying to find her, they might do something drastic and try and take her out of the picture altogether. Permanantly."

His troubled expression matched hers, and he nodded solemnly. "I'll see what I can do as well, whenever we're in port. I'll use public extranet portals to make some calls, see if I can't drum up any leads. We'll find her, Shepard."

"Damn right we will," she murmured. "When we do, if she really _is_ done with me then…that's that. But we're on a fucking suicide mission. I already died once without getting a chance to tell her I was sorry, to say good-bye. I'll be fucked if I'll do it _again_."


	17. Chapter 17

Author's Note: So, I kind of posted this in a rush and forgot the author's note I wanted to add.

So, Bladhaire is so totally uber-wicked-awesome, and has posted this lovely little one shot based on Del and Liara. You should so TOTALLY check it out. http:/www . fanfiction . net/s/7767251/1/Music_for_the_Soul

Fave and rave! Now, on with the show!

* * *

><p>Noon heat on Tuchanka was miserable. Even the wind that moaned in low, ghost-like voices through the washes and broken canyons brought no relief, each brush of its touch against skin simply the blast of a furnace.<p>

Like great scars in the rock and dirt, deep cracks had opened, the remnants of some ages-ago earthquake, or tectonic reaction from large weapons during the Rebellion. Mostly eroded with sand, the wide cracks posed many hazards…well rounded rock suddenly changing to sharp, broken edges, and seemingly solid ground revealing only sink-pits of drifted dirt that threatened any unwary footstep.

The figures in beige were not krogan, far too small and lithe for that race. Their suits were form-fitting, revealing feminine curves. Hoods bound around their heads, dust-goggles and rebreathers keeping out the almost constant pelting of sand and dirt, but doing nothing for the heat. The color of their garb blended almost perfectly with the rocks they moved along.

Eír crept along the stones and broken boulders, taking care to stay out of the open land of the crevasse so as not to misstep into one of the sand-drifted pits. Her goal was to stay out of the blasts of wind, to remain as hidden as possible.

Across the small canyon Shrive was doing the same, moving nimbly along the landscape. Then the elder asari paused, Eír doing so a moment later.

Soft sounds could be heard ahead, snuffling grunts. Eír, eager to get the first kill of the hunt, edged forward a bit more, straining to see.

A small herd of strange creatures were gathered in a wide-spot of the crevasse, taking advantage of the shelter to avoid the worst of the noon sun. Like most creatures on Tuchanka, they were scaled and well-plated, their low heavy heads thick with bone, with tiny eyes that were rudimentary at best. Their front legs were nicely clawed, their back end thick and powerful. As Eír spotted them she saw one sit on its haunches, lifting its fore-body into the air and stretching an impossibly long tongue into cracks along the walls.

She had only a small caliber rifle and a knife. Risking half a glance over at Shrive, she saw the older girl trying to move to a better vantage point without alerting the herd. Eír grinned, and carefully sighted her rifle onto the standing beast.

Just as she pulled the trigger, it withdrew a tongue coated with insects and dropped down again to enjoy its snack. The shot whined off the rock where its head had been moments before, and instantly the entire herd alarmed and bolted. Amazingly fast for such dense, heavy beasts they scattered. Gritting her teeth, Eír let off another shot at a fleeing set of hindquarters, missing again. Determined not to let them escape, she jumped down off the rocks and ran along the canyon floor, her hand lighting up with blue fire as she flung it forward.

One of the beasts bleated in alarm as the biotic bubble surrounded it, lifting it high in the air. Letting out a breath of relief, Eír grinned behind her rebreather, turning her head to look at Shrive as the older asari reached her side, pulling off her mask and goggles.

"Let it go," she ordered. Eír blinked at her in surprise, then scowled.

"No, I got it fair and square," she protested.

"No, you didn't," Shrive said sternly. "Vilkol have no biotics, Eír, and no way to counter biotics. You do it no honor or justice. Put it down."

"It's mine!" Eír said angrily. "What honor or justice does an animal deserve? I am smarter than it is and I caught-"

She stumbled as a light wave of biotics shoved into her, hitting her hard enough to cast her down into a sit. She lost her concentration, her own biotics dying. The bubble around the suspended vilkol vanished and the animal fell to the ground, scrambled to its feet, and was gone.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Eír snarled, jumping back to her feet and glaring murderously at her teacher. "I had it!"

"You still understand _nothing_," Shrive replied sternly. "You use your biotics for everything, Shrive. You cannot do that. You must learn to walk before you can run."

"But I know _how_ to run! Why shouldn't I?"

"You may know how to run, Eír but you do not know how to look where you are _going_. You will run right off a cliff before you know it is there, because your pride blinds you. On its feet, a beast has a chance to run, to fight, to change its own fate…a chance that every living creature deserves. To hold one helpless and kill it is as good as shooting a pet in a cage…there is no honor, no strength, only cowardice. If you cannot kill a creature fairly then you don't deserve to kill it at all."

"And guns are fair?" Eír asked, flabbergasted. "The vilkol cannot shoot back at us either!"

"No, but guns miss. Its plates are thick and may deflect a bullet if it is not placed exactly right. It has a chance to run or to fight, and escape if it is fast, strong, or clever enough. It cannot do any of those things, however, if it cannot move. If you hold it suspended you can then shoot it and shoot it until you accomplish the kill. Its death is then not chance but inevitability, helplessness. Only cowards kill that which is helpless."

"I am not a coward!"

Shrive's narrow gaze was inscrutable. "Eír, you are strong. Your biotics are strong, the strongest I have ever seen. But as I have said so many times before, strength alone is not _everything_! What happens if you cannot use your biotics? What happens if you are injured, or if you have exhausted their use? What happens if you are cinched? What then?"

"I…what is 'cinched?'" Eír asked, having never heard the term. Shrive looked vaguely troubled, then shook her head.

"I can explain when we return to camp," she said matter-of-factly, then let out a sigh as she looked up at the sun. "The vilkol's alarms would have scared all game away from this area for a kilometer in each direction, and the day is growing hotter. We will go back to camp now, try again in the morning."

Readjusting their mask and goggles, the pair of asari headed back to the small camp they had made that morning before dawn, when they had first arrived on the plains for their hunt. Buhto and the boys had departed for their hunt some thirty kilometers to the north at the same time, but here it was just Eír and Shrive.

The cave was set into the side of a deep wash that had long ago dried up. It had been used as a hunting camp for two centuries. A well had been sunk far into the ground and provided water from a deep underground river. Cracks in the rock also reached this river and so the cave itself remained cool and a little humid as a result. Accessible by only one narrow path it was an easily defensible location, something krogan insisted upon.

They had left their supplies in the cave before they had departed to hunt. As they returned, the cool shade descending on them felt like balm. Eír removed her head coverings, taking a deep breath in appreciation, mopping the sweat from her face. Though they had walked in silence the last hour to return here, she had not forgotten her interest.

"What is cinched?" she asked, even as Shrive removed her own gear. The elder asari went to her bedroll and her packed belongings. Fishing in her bag a moment she came out with something strange, something Eír had never before seen.

It was made of flexible jointed metal, each piece about an inch wide and less than a centimeter thick. It formed a continuous loop, half again as large as an average belt. As well, she drew out a small device she held in the palm of her hand. Still crouched over her bag, she lifted the jointed loop so that Eír could see it.

"This is a cinch," she told her. "They are ancient devices, predating the Protheans. Their technology is much like that of the mass relays. They have proven…impossible to reproduce. There are only a dozen known in the entire galaxy. Pray that in battle your opponent is never in possession of one of them."

Eír moved over with curious interest, sitting down nearby, her eyes fixed to the 'belt'. "How is it you have one?" she asked. "What does it do?"

"Grandfather Frek gave it to me. His father discovered it during the Rachni Wars. We cannot know for certain its original intent. It is possible it is a slaving device, or an instrument used in torture."

Setting down the smaller device in her hand, she held the links over her palms. "As you see, it forms a continuous loop, but the joints can be displaced."

Closing each hand she pulled apart, and the loop severed along the crease between two joints. Pausing a moment, she then carefully narrowed the gap in between them. When it got within a few inches of itself, the two halves leapt together and refused. Lifting it, she offered it to Eír.

"You try."

The device was light and cool in her hands, the shining metal as smooth as silk. She stroked it a moment before taking hold of it as Shrive had done, and pulling.

Nothing happened. Grimacing, she strained harder, then harder still, until her muscles were bulging, her clenched teeth bared. Still, nothing happened. The links refused to separate.

"I can't," she panted as she loosened her grip. Shrive plucked up the tiny device at her feet, and then set it on the ground before Eír.

"Touch that, but do not pick it up. Then try again."

Wrinkling her nose in confusion, Eír touched the small cube. In the brief moment of contact she could feel a tiny distant vibration, like the ghost of a hum. Then she took hold of the loop again. This time, it separated at the lightest tug.

As she snapped it back together, Shrive picked up the cube. "This device controls the cinch," she explained. "Only the last person to have touched this device can undo the cinch, or control it."

"You still have not explained what it _does_," Eír accused. Shrive lifted a brow, then took the cinch from Eír's hand and straightened. As the other girl got to her feet as well, she separated the links, dropping one end to whisper against the floor. Without warning, she suddenly lashed her hand out.

In a flash of light winking off metal, the cinch snapped out and wound itself around Eír's arm, the links sealing again and holding the device on her tightly. Startled, Eír took a step back, looking at it.

"You cannot remove it," Shrive told her. "I could wind it about your neck, about your waist, any limb, and it will immediately lock. Now. Try your biotics. Hit me with your most powerful slam."

When Eír hesitated Shrive shook her head. "You will not be hurt. Neither will I. Go on."

Drawing on her biotics, Eír gathered the energy and then flung it toward Shrive.

Nothing happened.

She blinked, looking at her hands, then tried again. She could feel the power gathering, feel it flowing through her. She drew it up and then flung it toward Shrive again.

Nothing happened.

"Look at the cinch," Shrive instructed. Eír glanced down at the band hugging her arm like a serpent, and saw the joints were now glowing blue.

"The cinch captures any biotic energy and immediately charges itself with it," Shrive told her. "Kind of like a battery. It can hold a tremendous amount of power…a thousand more of those attempted shocks. So long as it binds you, you are biotically helpless.

Eír's brows knit, and for a moment she wondered if this all wasn't some kind of trick, that by pretending to use instruction, Shrive had rendered her completely helpless and unable to fight.

Clearly the older girl saw her thought process on her face.

"What you are feeling right now, that helplessness? That is what I meant earlier," Shrive told her. "Your biotics are only a single tool in what _should_ be an arsenal. Even now, you should be able to disable or even kill me. You should be confident in your strength, your cunning, and your reflexes to defend yourself even when so shackled."

"Are you going to leave me shackled?" Eír asked warily.

Shrive said nothing, only lifted a brow, and for a moment Eír was certain that was exactly what the girl intended to do. That thought was banished, however, as the older girl reached forward and unfastened the cinch, allowing it to slip away from Eír's arm. The younger asari rubbed the places it had gripped idly, taking a step back from it. The cinch was still glowing.

"Now this is what I meant by torture," Shrive murmured. Turning, she cast the cinch across the cave floor, and narrowed her eyes at it, the cube in her hand again.

There was a biotic flash, a bright, forceful expulsion of blue energy that trembled the cave floor. When it faded, the cinch was again dark. As Eír blinked the afterimage away from her eyes, Shrive went over and picked it up again. "All the biotic energy it has charged within can be released at once…even while it is on a victim," she murmured, regarding it almost sadly. "Or it can be released in tiny doses, at the whim of whomever holds the cube. All that biotic energy strikes inward, at the one cinched. A large enough release can kill. Small releases cause pain relative to the amount willed by the captor."

Staring at the expression on Shrive's face, Eír realized something that made her cold. "You know because…someone used it on _you_."

"Yes," Shrive said calmly, looking up from the device to her pupil. "My mother."

"Matriarch Misira tortured you with that cinch? Why?" Eír was shocked, horrified at the thought.

"Because I asked her to," Shrive responded. "You cannot overcome something unless you are faced with it. I wanted to learn how to fight even through pain, to not lose myself to the agony of a wound or fear of torture. By feeling it, I took charge of it, controlled it, became its master. It will never have a hold on me again."

Eír looked at the cinch in the other girl's hand, her lavender eyes darkly brooding a moment, before they lifted to Shrive's gaze.

"Teach me," she asked, holding out her arm.

Shrive searched the gaze of her companion deeply a moment, then nodded. Whipping the cinch out again, she snapped it around Eír's outstretched limb.

"Remember, the pain does not control you," she said. "You are stronger than it, more powerful. You can overcome. Now, charge the cinch."

Eír drew in her biotics again, attempting yet another slam. The cinch immediately began to glow. She started to try another one but Shrive shook her head.

"One is more than enough for our purposes," she said. "Now focus, concentrate. I shall let only a little out at a time."

Eír took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she centered herself. After a moment, she nodded. "Do it."

It was like a white hot flame lighting every nerve ending in her body at once. It lasted less than the space of half a heartbeat, there and then gone again, but the momentary force of it made Eír gasp. Trembling, she took a step backward, her mouth suddenly feeling dry. Shrive said nothing, and after a moment Eír took another breath, then nodded.

"Again."

Another lance. Her nerves, apparently still sensitive from the first, screamed at her. As before, it lasted barely a breath before fading away again. This time, she gave herself less of a pause before ordering, "Again!"

Another strike. A cry grit out from her teeth, sweat breaking on her forehead. Her glare was almost feral and barely had the pain started to die than she snapped, "_Again_!"

Shrive obediently hit her again. Then again at her request, until the jolts came so close together one had no time to die out before another was hitting her.

It was unbelievable. Every cell of her body seemed to be aflame. Muscles strained, sweat trickled down her face, panting cries escaping the clenched prison of her teeth. She had no idea pain like this even existed.

She had collapsed down to her knees, spilling forward onto her hands. Tears spilled down her cheeks, but her eyes flashed up toward Shrive when the agony started to die. "No…_more_," she insisted. "A-again…"

"Are you su-"

"I will b-beat this," she panted, cheeks and nostrils flaring with each rapid breath. "_Again_!"

The pain returned, rising to insane levels. She let out a cry, barely aware of herself as she collapsed onto her side, every muscle fiber clenching spastically at once. So hot did it burn she didn't at first realize it had stopped. The world was swimming, slanting away into darkness as she saw Shrive's face looming over her.

Then nothing more.

* * *

><p>"Commander Shepard and Garrus Vakarian have returned aboard," EDI announced. Turning away from her conversation with Hawthorne, Miranda looked forward from the CIC as the pair strode in from helmside.<p>

"Commander," she greeted, walking over. "We just received notification that your Spectre status was reinstated. Apparently your meeting with Anderson went well."

"I'm not in chains, so well enough," Shepard agreed. "I have to be a good little girl, however, and restrict myself to the Traverse until this mess is over."

"Oh. Well, that shouldn't be too difficult. We-"

The rat, which had been curled up on Shepard's shoulder, half-dozing beneath her hair, suddenly poked its nose out, scenting the air eagerly. Miranda caught sight of it and suddenly seemed to teleport instantly six feet away, one hand gripping the edge of a console as if she expected to be sucked out a hull breach.

"What is _that_?" she asked, trying to sound stern though her eyes betrayed her discomfort.

Shepard lifted her brows slightly, then reached a hand up and drew the rat off her shoulder. "It's a rat, Miranda," she said evenly. "I saw her cute little mug on the Citadel and got her."

"It's a _rodent_," Miranda protested, her grip not having loosened on the console. Kelly, drawn from her station by curiosity, moved over with a soft 'awww'.

"Can I hold him Shepard?" she asked.

"It's a her, and sure," she replied, passing the small animal over to the yeoman. As Kelly cooed over it Miranda scowled.

"Rodents do not belong on starships, Commander," she protested. "If it got loose it could get anywhere. Chew through wiring…short out EDI."

Shepard shrugged. "This ship is far more advanced than a fourth-gen garbage scow, Lawson, and even those have vent infrared and rodent-proof clamp-doors in any accessible space. Even if she did get out, she'd get about four feet into any vent or access-way before the sensors would catch her and lock her in. Even rats can't chew through steel."

"The Captain of the _Francois Maid_ has guinea pigs," Chambers supplied helpfully. Miranda shot her a withering look.

"Fine," she said at last. "Fine, just…I don't want to see it."

"Fair enough," Shepard replied, taking the small animal back from Chambers. "I'll try and keep her out of your way. Has Goto settled in?"

Miranda finally realized she was still holding on to the console and loosened her grip, folding her arms. "Yes, she's on board. Took up residence on the starboard observation deck."

"Good. I'm going to go and have a word with her. Kelly, did my packages arrive?"

"Yes ma'am, just a few minutes ago. They've been taken up to your quarters."

"Thanks. Miranda, if you don't mind putting us on a course for the Hourglass Nebula? And send a message to the warden of _Purgatory_ that we're on our way, get exact coords. We should be there tomorrow."

Miranda only nodded, stepping back against the console as Shepard strode past toward the lift, rat still in her hands. Watching her go as well, Kelly walked over to the Cerberus XO.

"Bit afraid of rats?" she asked gently.

"I don't like rodents," Miranda defended. Kelly shrugged.

"Nothing to be ashamed of, ma'am. Many people do not like rodents. Myself…I hate spiders. Most insects in general, actually. Had Shepard come on board with a tarantula you'd need a ladder to scrape me off the ceiling."

Miranda shook her head, still scowling. "It shouldn't be on board."

"Well, think of it this way," Kelly replied. "It's been medically proven that pets help relieve stress, increase focus, provide motivation. You know as well as I do that Shepard needs all the stress -relief and emotional support she can get. This is a positive step for her, therapeutic. I think it's great."

Miranda's soft hum revealed she had her doubts, as she continued to look toward the closed lift. "She seems a bit…cheerful to me," she admitted. "After T'Soni's good-bye letter I expected a repeat of the target practice in her room, or for her to get utterly plastered. She…seems to be taking it rather well."

"You're afraid she's taking it a bit _too_ well," Kelly commented. Miranda glanced at her.

"When are you speaking to her next?"

"Tonight," Kelly stated. "Since we'll be en route to _Purgatory_ she should have some down-time."

Miranda nodded, then gestured. "I expect a full report, of course," she said. "For now, go…go wash your hands. There's no telling what that rodent got all over them."

* * *

><p>"She's adorable," Kasumi said, lips curving in a grin, her fingertips playing through the rat's whiskers as it perched on her knee. Capturing one finger with her tiny pink hands the animal began to groom it with intent sweeps of her tongue.<p>

"Miranda doesn't think so," Shepard replied, pouring herself a drink at the tiny lounge bar nearby.

"What are you going to name her?" Kasumi asked, gently extricating her finger from the rat's paws, and lightly scratching her behind her ears.

Shepard shrugged, turning to lean back on the bar as she took a sip of her drink. "Dunno. I don't think I'm very good at naming things. I just keep calling her Rat."

"You'll think of something," the thief replied, then gestured at the other half of the low sofa. "Please, sit. We have much to talk about."

Moving over, Shepard sat down. As she did, the rat abandoned Goto's knee, trucking down her leg before bounding up Shepard's side and back onto her shoulder. It made Kasumi smile.

"Don't tell me animals aren't smart," she commented. "She already knows where she belongs."

"If only it were so easy for the rest of us," Shepard murmured.

"Amen to that," her companion agreed, before she hugged her knees to her chest. "Well, you wanted me to tell you about my favor. I'm trying to acquire a very important item."

Shepard looked over at her across the rim of her glass. "You want me to help you steal something."

"Not precisely. It would be more accurate to say that I want you to help me steal something _back_. I used to have a partner, Keiji Okuda. Do…you know what a greybox is?"

"Vaguely," Shepard admitted. "Black market tech."

"They're devices planted directly into the brain that can record and store information, even memories," Kasumi told her. "Both Keiji and I had greyboxes installed a while back. Then a man named Donovan Hock murdered him and took his greybox."

Shepard sat up a little, brows knitting. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "Why would this Hock want his greybox? What was on it?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Kasumi admitted. "Something important enough for Hock to kill him over it. I need to get it back before Hock manages to get past its encryption and retrieve whatever data is recorded on it."

"And that's where I come in."

"Hock is powerful," Kasumi told her. "He's a weapons and art collector, more than half of which is black market stuff. He's also a paranoid criminal. There are government treasuries on some planets that don't have the security he does. Even so, it would be simple…were I completely anonymous to him. Unfortunately, he knows my name, knows that Keiji was my partner. He's expecting me to make an attempt to get the greybox. He'll be counting on it. I need an angle, and a heavy hitter, if I'm going to get Keiji's greybox back. He won't be expecting _you_."

"I'm like the Spanish Inquisition," Shepard smirked lightly around her glass, before taking another swallow. "So what's the plan?"

"I'm still working on that," Kasumi admitted. "I have his home location but as I said, we need an angle…preferably a quiet one. We can't just storm in, guns blazing. Subtlety is required."

Shepard snorted. "I'm hardly what most people consider _subtle_."

The side of Kasumi's mouth lifted in a grin. "I doubt you are entirely without finesse," she said. "A special forces marine? Any soldier knows that it isn't all about who has the biggest gun. You have been trained in subterfuge, shadow ops…espionage?"

"True," Shepard admitted. "Though it's been a goddamn long time. All right, Goto. I did make you a promise. You get the plan laid down and just let me know what you need from me."

"I should hopefully have a more concrete idea of what we're going to do within the next few days," Kasumi told her. "I…appreciate this, Shepard. This means a lot to me."

Shepard nodded, regarding the woman from the corner of her eye. She had an expression on her face…faint, but unmistakably there. It was a look Shepard had seen on her own face more than once since the _Normandy_ had gone down. After a moment she leaned forward, setting her now empty glass on the small table nearby. "Keiji wasn't just your partner, was he?"

"No," Kasumi admitted. Though dry, her dark eyes were faintly gloss as she looked up at the commander. "Have you ever lost anyone, Shepard?"

"Yeah," Shepard replied, then wiped a hand over her face, making a helpless gesture. "Couple people."

Kasumi nodded her understanding. "Then you know why I need to get this greybox back. It isn't just classified intel that may be on it, whatever it was that got Keiji killed. His memories are there as well, the last pieces of him left to me."

Shepard reached up to her collar, tugging out the gold chain with its tiny cross. She rarely took it off, but usually kept it under her shirt. "This is all I have from one of them. Nancy. She…well, she helped me through some dark shit. Guess you could say she was the only real mother I knew. Her son was my best friend when I first joined up with the Alliance. I lost them both."

"I'm sorry, Shepard," Kasumi said gently. "Accident?"

"No. Paul was murdered," she said, tucking the cross away again. "Nancy was taken by the Collectors. _Her_, I'm going to find and bring home safely."

She could feel the weight of the thief's eyes on her, and cleared her throat. "Well, anyway. Depressing shit. Not important. Um…tomorrow we should be meeting up with a prison ship. They've got some crazy powerful biotic in custody I want for the mission. Apparently, Cerberus is willing to pay an astronomical amount of bail to get her out and on the team. If you don't mind, when we make the retrieval, I'd like you along."

Kasumi smiled. "Taking a master thief onto a prison, Shepard? I can taste the irony from here."

Shepard grinned a little. "Yeah well. Should be a simple enough bag. Hard part is the money and someone else is paying that so all we have to do is pick her up. Seriously, it'll be fucking boring."

"Thank you then for including me in your mundane errand," Kasumi teased.

"Yeah, well…Miranda won't let me hear the end of it if I go on board alone and I'd like to weigh you in a bit more. Get you stretching your legs a little. Besides, my kind of luck…at some point, there'll be running and screaming."

What she didn't tell Kasumi was that she hoped they'd have a short amount of time to talk aboard the _Purgatory_…away from the prying ears and spy-cams of Cerberus. She didn't dare discuss Liara or her continuing search for her on board the _Normandy_.

"Well, could be interesting," Kasumi admitted. "I've gotten in and out of a few prisons before, but…never one in space. Might be neat to see it."

"Good. Well. I'll leave you alone. Welcome aboard."

She offered her hand, and Kasumi sat forward, taking it with a smile. As the Commander left she settled back again, turning her head to look at the stars. It was going to be interesting, working with a whole team of people for a while. Kasumi was used to working on her own…that is, before Keiji. And though her heists were often full of adventure and intrigue, being part of such an operation was…titillating. She'd never gotten the chance to be part of something really big before.

She couldn't wait.

* * *

><p>"You ever been in love before?" Shepard asked, leaning forward across the small table in her quarters as she poured another finger or two of whiskey into Chambers' glass. The last third of a cigar burned between her teeth, but Shepard had shed her hat and untied her hair. Still falling nearly to the middle of her back, her hair had only the slightest wave to it, the contribution of her Native American heritage making it all but perfectly straight. It was remarkably thick, however. The kind of thick most women would kill for.<p>

The black strands draped over her cheeks and threatened almost constantly to fall into her face. She shook them back with a mildly irritated flip as she sat back, ashing her cigar into the tray nearby.

"A few times," Kelly admitted. "Nothing serious. Of course, some would argue that if it is not serious, it's not love."

"Hmm," Shepard agreed, and let out a stream of smoke on a thoughtful breath, her eyes far away.

"What about you?" Kelly asked. "I mean, _before_ you met Dr. T'Soni. Was there ever…anyone else?"

"This is the psych profile coming out, isn't it?" Shepard smirked. "Let me see if I can't quote it."

She leaned back a little, looking toward the ceiling as she gestured grandly with her cigar. "Shepard, Delilah S. Subject suffers from marked Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and possible borderline personality disorder stemming from lack of proper socialization during formative years. Has trouble forming relationships and displays a lack of emotional commitment. Anger issues are marked but directionable. Subject shows an extreme aptitude toward strategy and wide-angle thinking allowing her to make use of her own environment during combat scenarios. Extremely single-minded when given a task, subject can be depended upon to push until the task is concluded. Despite psych disorders, subject is extremely stable, rational, and poses no threat to the security of her team or her ship."

"That's pretty impressive," Kelly smiled. "And a bit strange, don't you think?"

"What, that I memorized my last psych profile?" Shepard asked.

"No. That it says you have trouble forming relationships and that you display a lack of emotional commitment. I don't think that's the case at all. It may take you _time_ to trust someone, but you are fiercely devoted and loyal once you do."

"Well, we _are_ talking about Alliance shrinks here," Shepard told her, picking up her whiskey. "Talk to them five minutes and they think they have you all figured out."

"You are also dissembling," Kelly pointed out, taking a sip of her own drink. "Trying to distract me from the question I asked…which you still have not answered. Was there anyone else that you had a romantic connection to, prior to meeting Dr. T'Soni?"

Shepard glowered a little, stumping her spent cigar out a bit more firmly than necessary in the tray. "No," she said.

"You're lying."

Shepard said nothing, only tossed back the rest of her whiskey and watched Rat weaving her way through her new play tubes connected with her environment.

After a moment, Kelly nodded. "I understand," she said. "None of my business."

"Cerberus really put you on as my yeoman just to try and get inside my head?" Shepard asked after a moment. "Keep me from going bat-shit motherfuck on everyone?"

"Not entirely," Kelly told her. "This is an extremely high-risk mission, Shepard. It is my job to keep tabs not only on you but the entire crew. Stress like this can cause any number of problems and every personality handles such things differently. Vakarian, for example, throws himself into work, as does Ms. Lawson. Joker uses his sense of humor as a defense mechanism, his arguments with EDI an outlet to his fear."

Shepard looked at her, flipping an annoying strand of hair back again. "And what about you? What does Kelly do?"

"I concern myself with everyone else," Kelly replied with a faint smile.

Shepard smirked, refilled her glass. As she leaned over and refilled Kelly's as well, the yeoman gestured to her hair. "Why have you not gotten it cut yet?"

"I don't know," Shepard said honestly. "I keep intending to, just haven't yet. Stupid as fuck not to when I can expect to see combat. Maybe I'll cut it tomorrow."

Lifting her glass she held it out to the yeoman in an offer of toast. "Here's to the _Normandy_ and her crew," she said. "The sorriest bunch of angry, shit-mouthed, OCD, broken-hearted workaholic fuck-ups in the entire galaxy."

Kelly smiled, tinking her glass against the Commander's. "To the _Normandy_," she murmured. Shepard gave Kelly a grin, lifting her glass to her lips.

"Scariest part?" she said before she downed the whiskey. "_We're_ gonna be the ones to save the _fuckin'_ world."


	18. Chapter 18

Shepard, in hard-suit and with weapons-pack on, strode off of the lift and into the CIC, still pulling her hair back. Despite her notion to Kelly the night before, it remained uncut.

Miranda turned as she entered, her blue eyes momentarily searching Shepard's shoulder pads. The commander eyed her.

"I'm not about to take Rat anywhere if I feel the need to dress in combat gear first," Shepard told her, then smirked as the XO relaxed almost imperceptibly. "Besides, I told you I'd keep her out of your way."

"We've just reached Osun," Miranda replied, focusing on business. "We have communications contact with _Purgatory_ and should be docking within the next five minutes."

Moving up to the galaxy map, Shepard selected their current location, drawing her hand back to expand it until she could see a virtual representation of both the _Normandy_ and the prison ship she approached.

"Ugly vessel," she murmured.

"It used to be an ark," Miranda told her. "Used for animals. Still is, just animals of a different sort."

"We're _all_ animals, Lawson," Shepard said thoughtfully, still regarding the _Purgatory_. The lift opened again, and Miranda looked over as Zaeed and Kasumi exited, both armed to accompany Shepard. Speaking softly and leaning over a little, Miranda spoke to the commander.

"Do you think Massani the best choice?" she asked. "The _Purgatory_ is run by the Blue Suns. Given his personal history…"

"Most Blue Suns have no clue who he is," Shepard replied. "Zaeed's stone, he'll be fine…so long as Vido isn't actually aboard, a prospect I find extremely unlikely."

Closing the galaxy map back to its default she straightened. "This should be simple," she stated. "Twenty minutes, in and out with Jack."

Miranda nodded. "The funds from Cerberus have been delivered. I don't forsee any difficulties."

"Tell Joker to keep the helm warm, just in case."

* * *

><p>The <em>Purgatory<em> smelled like steam and old pipes, the air slightly more humid than was usual aboard stations and starships. Air-recyc and oxy-gen units generally produced an atmosphere that was especially dry, unless environmental controls were added to increase humidity. Even so, ships and stations leaned toward the arid side, the right balance of atmospheric moisture requiring far too much in H2O reserves to be economically feasible.

At the edge of the docking ramp, turian guards watched them closely as they approached, weapons in hand though not directly threatening. Their armor was painted blue, plastered with the Suns insignia. "Nice welcoming party," Zaeed noted.

"It is a prison ship," Shepard shrugged.

One of the guards held up a hand as they reached them. "Commander Shepard," he greeted. "Your package is ready for pick-up. If you will just surrender your weapons-"

"Hand me yours first, and I'll give you mine," Shepard smirked, folding her arms. The guard blinked at her.

"Uh…It's…standard procedure, Commander. This is a prison ship, filled with highly dangerous criminals. All guests must surrender their weapons before they can be cleared to go in."

Shepard's smirk faded. "Perhaps I wasn't clear, so let me explain this to you in depth, using simple terms you'll be _sure_ to understand."

Her eyes went to stone, and she leaned forward ever so slightly, her gaze burning into his.

"_**No**__._"

The turian blinked again, before his mandibles fluttered in irritation. Touching his radio, he spoke into it. "Warden? Commander Shepard has arrived, but-"

"I heard, private."

The reply came from another turian who was striding into view. Shepard lifted a brow faintly to see the man was barefaced, with no trace of the race's usual clan markings. It was strange to see a turian that way, it being a bit of stigma in their culture. She wondered at the cause.

"Commander Shepard," he said. His words were polite enough, but his tone was that of one used to being obeyed. "I am Warden Kuril of the _Purgatory_. I'm afraid my guardsman is right. Visitors are not allowed to carry weapons aboard ship. Don't worry, they will be returned to you."

Shepard nodded slowly. "All right then," she said, then looked at Kasumi. "We're heading back on board. Tell Lawson to contact Cerberus and have the payment to Kuril revoked. We won't be picking up Jack after all."

As the trio turned back toward the ramp, Kuril lifted a hand. "Wait! Wait, Commander…there's no need for that."

"Apparently there is," Shepard told him, turning her head to look at him. "I am not giving up my weapons, Kuril, so we are at an impasse."

Shaking his head, Kuril nodded in concession, then looked at his men. "I suppose an exception can be made this one time. We are secure enough to handle three armed guests. Let them through."

Shepard knew it. The man was all about creds. Honestly, what she'd read up on about _Purgatory_ made her sick. It was little more than a controlled slave and blackmail organization. Coerce funds out of governments that didn't want their dangerous criminals to be dropped back on their world at an undisclosed time and location, and selling such criminals to anyone with the creds to pay for them…no questions asked. Some were bought for cheap labor. Others by family members of their victims so they could exact their own special brand of revenge.

It was little secret to anyone that Shepard fucking _hated_ slavers.

Even so, they had a purpose she couldn't lose sight of. Right now, getting her team together was priority. The sooner that was done, the sooner they could find Nancy. Every day, every hour that separated them from that goal was banishing whatever slim odds there were to finding her alive.

_Enjoy your puppet empire, Kuril_, she thought as she stepped past the guards. _When the Collectors and the Reapers are handled, you _will_ be seeing me again._

Following the Warden they moved deep into the ship, along enclosed corridors that threaded over enclosed courtyards lined with modular cells. Kuril seemed to be in love with the sound of his own voice, almost immediately launching into a two-bit tour as they went. He explained the history of the ship, the enclosed cell system, and how he occasionally launched a few out into space to set examples to the prisoners. He kept reiterating how dangerous the prisoners were, most insane, nearly all psychotic mass-murderers, and the elaborate measures they had to keep them in their place.

As Kasumi asked about escapes, Shepard watched a dark energy pedestal separating two brawling prisoners on the grounds below, trapping them in individual fields of biotic energy.

"We have no escapes," Kuril said proudly. "Our security measures are top-notch. Different sections of the ship and even the entire vessel can be completely locked down within seconds. Besides, we're in space…they're crazy, but not dumb. Where would they go?"

He shook his head with a smirk. "Strange you want Jack. She's the craziest of them all."

"Is she?" Shepard asked dryly as they continued on.

"You have no idea," he told her. "But…she's your problem now. If you'll excuse me, Shepard…I'm going to go make sure my payment cleared." He pointed along the corridor. "Just keep going this way, through the super-max wing. Out-processing is just beyond, at the end of the junction."

Shepard watched him go silently. Almost the instant he was out of ear-shot, Zaeed snorted.

"Asshole," he grumped. Kasumi nodded.

"That man is a weasel," she agreed. "Making money on other people's suffering like this."

"Let's just get Jack and get out of here," Shepard said, and they continued on their way.

It wasn't long before they saw the door marked 'Out-Processing'. Stepping through, however, revealed a wide lobby occupied only by a single technician…one that was all but completely ignoring them.

"Excuse me," Shepard tried, only to have the tech grunt at her, not looking up from his console.

"Through the door on the back wall," he said in irritation. Scowling, any trace of good mood now gone, Shepard strode toward the far wall. Halfway there, Kasumi stepped in beside her and murmured, "Shep…the tech just bugged out."

"Be ready for anything," Shepard murmured back. Her ever reliable gut was warning her.

_Can nothing ever be fucking_ easy?

As the door slid open, baring the interior of a cell-module, Shepard couldn't even be surprised. No wonder the man had gone on and on about how secure they were, how there was no chance of escape, how they dealt with incredibly dangerous individuals every day.

_Fucker never met_ me, she thought, a breath before Kuril's voice filled the air, transmitting over a comm.

"_My apologies Commander Shepard, but you are probably the most valuable sentient being in the galaxy. You will earn me _five times_ more than Cerberus paid for Jack. Let's not make this a problem, shall we? Please, remove your weapons-pack and step into this cell. You and your companions won't be harmed."_

The look on Shepard's face when she turned around, glaring at the comm system, was one of pure ice. "You _know_ you're a dead man, right?"

"_Please, Shepard,"_ Kuril sounded almost bored. _"Bravado is all well and good, but you've seen our security systems. Even armed you are grossly outnumbered by my guard personnel. Containing people like you is our every day bread and butter. The room you're in is completely locked down, and both guards and mechs are converging on your location. I'll tell you what…if you put down your weapons-pack and step into the cell without fuss, I'll let your two companions go. I doubt they'd be worth detaining anyway."_

"Huh," Shepard sniffed with bitter amusement. "All right then. Kasumi, unlock the door, would you?"

"_Anything_ for you," Kasumi winked with a smirk, and headed for the door. As she did Shepard unshipped her machine pistols, Zaeed drawing his shotgun.

"Bastard really doesn't know you, does he?" the merc said to her, before shaking his head. "Fucking idiot."

"Just promise me you won't set things on fire," Shepard ribbed as she strode toward the door. "_Again_."

"I promise nothing," he replied with a half-grin, ratcheting his shotgun.

"Open sesame," Kasumi chirped, a breath before the door slid open, baring a small group of surprised Suns mercs. It hadn't even taken her a full ten seconds. So much for _Kuril's_ bravado.

Half of them were down before they even realized what was going on, two nearly cut in half with Zaeed's shotgun, the others getting Shepard's pistol-fire in their faces. While the gunfire filled the room, Kasumi calmly accessed the nearby console the tech had been doodling on, her omni-tool lit.

"_Reinforcements to out-processing!"_ Kuril sounded less bored now. _"Shepard is loose! Repeat, Shepard is loose!"_

As the last guard fell, a pair of FENRIS came charging around the corner.

Actual mechs, the FENRIS were four legged synths that often took the place of guard-dogs in places like these. They dropped as easily as any other mech, bullets shattering their eye-lights and tearing limbs off in a scream of disjointed metal. As the gunfire died, Shepard replaced her clips.

"I have their actual ship schematics, population locations," Kasumi informed her, stepping away from the console as she regarded her omni-tool. "Jack is in cryo lock-down not far from here. Out the door, to the left."

"You remember last night?" Shepard asked as she moved out of the room and into the corridor, putting her back to the wall as she surveyed the junction, seeing distant guard pelting their way. "You were afraid this was going to be _boring_."

"I stand corrected," Kasumi replied with a gleam in her eye. "You do know how to show a girl a good time."

Shepard smirked, measuring the speed the guards were moving at. "Yeah, remember what else I said? _There's_ the running…"

She stepped out from cover, her guns lighting in a fury of death, the flashes from the muzzles casting an almost strobing light over her face. When she stopped, three of the guards were dead, one holding his wounded leg and moaning loudly in agony. Shepard strode up to him, her site fixing on his forehead. The turian's eyes went wide and he began to shriek as he tried to fumble for his weapon.

"And _there's_ the screaming," Shepard finished, before pulling her trigger.

* * *

><p>It was the alarms that did it, though why it happened at the moment that it did, Shepard could not fathom.<p>

The alarms had been going off ever since they'd managed to release Jack from cryo. Opening the woman's frozen prison had been accomplished only by overriding the lockdown commands for the prisoner modules ship-wide: they could not release Jack without releasing _everyone_.

Shepard had only gotten half a glimpse of the biotic before she was out of sight, tearing apart both a heavy mech and a metal wall in her bid to escape. The mech was still spitting when they reached it, staring at the gaping rent in the interior bulkhead.

The klaxons were wailing, Kuril frantically issuing orders from whatever safe office he had sequestered her in, the halls starting to fill with the roars of released and rioting prisoners.

For ten minutes, Shepard barely heard the alarms. She was too busy fighting for her life, dropping guards and wild-eyed convicts with grit-toothed determination. Kasumi was proving more than valuable, easily able to open doors or scout ahead. She had apparently acquired a top of the line, black-market shield-cloak, and could literally vanish at will, dropping guards and madmen alike before they knew she was there.

Shepard and Zaeed were all muscle, claiming every bit of corridor inch by inch, firing shoulder to shoulder and mowing down anything that got in their way.

However Jack was, apparently, doing more damage to the ship than they at first thought. The _Purgatory_'s VI was almost calm as it informed them of another hull breach in a sector not too far away, indicating it was locked down but there were no survivors.

Finding themselves in a momentary reprieve, Shepard leaned against the wall, clearing a hot clip and slapping a fresh one into place. They had just dropped Kuril in one of the large yards…Kuril, and half a dozen of his men who were already ragged from mowing down their share of prisoners. The Warden had actually proven to be a lot tougher than Shepard had thought, but was utterly raving mad, ranting the entire firefight about how he could have lived like a king if only Shepard had the good sense to cooperate.

Shepard was still intensely curious as to who it was that had offered to buy her from Kuril in the first place. Unfortunately, with the warden down and the ship falling apart, the chances of her finding out were growing very slim.

"She's going to bring this whole goddamn ship down," Zaeed panted at the VI's announcement, checking his own weapon.

"Kasumi, how far until we're back at the docking bay?" Shepard asked.

"Not too far, Shep," Kasumi replied. Around them the ship rumbled again, before the VI informed of another breach, another sector vented and locked down.

"Fuck," Shepard gasped, and suddenly the barely heard alarms seemed to become horribly loud and keen…and _it_ happened.

Shepard was no stranger to what the marines called SSDD. PTSD had been a frustratingly tolerated friend of hers since she was a kid. Her anger issues were a symptom, as well as her tendency to stay hyper-vigilant, her brain swiftly accessing and processing anything that might pose a threat. This was her what she called her 'gut', a form of paranoia that whispered to her subconscious when subtle pieces in her environment didn't fall quite right.

Flashbacks, another symptom, she had been fortunate enough to avoid, more or less. On rare occasion, while on the cusp of waking, stuck in that limbo land between sleep and consciousness, she would suddenly think she was back in the Room, or on her bunk in boot…or that there was some kind of incoming attack, some imminent danger about to descend. She would jolt to full consciousness, adrenaline spiking…but it would only last long enough for her eyes to actually focus, for reality to reassert itself.

But then, until fairly recently, Shepard had never actually _died_.

She should have expected this. The threat of a full flashback had reared its ugly head back at the refinery, momentary lapses where she could hear Joker's voice shouting his maydays, but it had been so brief and things so frantic she had completely forgotten about it. She was about to regret having forgotten.

Leaning on the wall in the corridor of the prison ship, the klaxon wailing and the implacable VI announcing the hull breach, Shepard suddenly lost herself.

{Mayday mayday mayday! This is SSV Normandy!} _Joker's voice echoed through the ship as Shepard ran toward the CIC, the air clogged with smoke and the light of flames._ _Wading through the vacuum, the golden ball of Alchera up above, Shepard passed through the containment field._

"_The ship is _lost, _Joker! __The two of us dying with her isn't going to stop it from happening!__"_

"_No, I can still save her!"_

_Air was vanishing. She was breathing and yet nothing but burning filled her lungs. Fumbling back for her oxy-lines she realized they were cut, that-_

"Shepard, stand down, that's a goddamn order!" A voice barked, loud and with so much authority that the soldier in her couldn't help but obey. Something clattered to the ground as Shepard snapped straight on her feet, staring at Zaeed.

* * *

><p>Kasumi didn't know what was happening, her first reaction merely one of confusion. Shepard suddenly straightened, her rifle in her hands, and ran down the corridor. Following after her, weapons ready, her team-mates merely thought she was making a push into the next sector and back toward the docking bay, when Shepard abruptly stopped again, breathing heavily.<p>

"Shep? What's wrong?" Kasumi asked, touching her arm.

"The ship is lost," Shepard panted, looking around with wide eyes. Alarmed, Kasumi checked her omni-tool, then shook her head.

"The _Normandy_ is fine, we're nearly there. Jack's still heading in the same direction-"

"The ship is _lost_, Joker!" Shepard insisted, grabbing hold of Kasumi's arm. "The two of us dying with her isn't going to stop it from happening!"

Now Kasumi knew something was really wrong. She wasn't a soldier or a marine, or a psychologist. Kasumi had heard of PTSD but had no direct experience with it, either in herself or others around her. When Shepard suddenly started gasping, hyperventilating, her alarm turned to outright fear.

Zaeed, however…Zaeed was an old friend to such things, cut from the same cloth as Shepard, though in a different shade. He, too, had experienced death and lived to tell about it.

The moment Shepard called Kasumi 'Joker', Zaeed knew what was happening…and he knew how to break her out of it.

Half-hunched, still gasping for air, her body remembering suffocation, her mind lost in the vacuum of space, Shepard was hyperventilating to the point she might have very well passed out, had Zaeed not grabbed her.

"Shepard, _stand down_, that's a goddamn order!"

Shepard snapped straight, her rifle falling out of her hands as she reflexively moved to attention. She blinked, focusing on Zaeed in confusion.

"Good, you're back," he said patiently.

"What happened?" she asked, disoriented.

"You flashed, Shepard. Happens. I take it you're not on meds."

"I…no, I've…never flashed before," she said. Still panting, trying to get her breathing under control again, she snatched up her rifle.

"Well now you have," he replied evenly. "Done it a time or two myself, before I started on the little greens. No harm done, but we need to move."

Shepard nodded her head, wiping her wrist over her forehead before visibly steeling herself. Zaeed could see in the woman's brown eyes that she was troubled, alarmed…but she'd compartmentalized it.

A good soldier could always put things in their place long enough to get the job done.

"What was that?" Kasumi asked as they started away again, Shepard taking the lead.

"She bloody flashed," Zaeed told her. "Something triggered her. Smoke maybe, or the hull breaches. Shepard was reliving her own death."

"My God," Kasumi murmured, eyes wide. Zaeed gave a mirthless chuckle.

"Yeah, it'll put a real goddamn damper on your day. Don't worry, she'll be fine. Not common for flashes to happen real close together. Nothing to worry about."

* * *

><p>Five minutes and ten more dead prisoners and they were finally closing in on Jack's location. It looked like they'd end up cornering her right in the docking bay, the woman no doubt looking for a shuttle or some other way off the swiftly dying prison.<p>

Scattered corpses of guards lead Shepard and her companions to Jack like scattered breadcrumbs leading the way home. As they emerged into the bay they spotted her.

She was pacing frantically, her eyes fixed on the _Normandy_. When a guard appeared on the other side of her, she didn't seem to notice him. Taking aim, Shepard took him out with a single shot.

_That_ drew her attention. Snapping around to face the approaching three, Jack's muscles were visibly tense.

Jack wasn't much how Shepard had pictured. The biotic was slightly shorter than she was, lean but corded with muscle. She was wearing a prison uniform but it had been torn…either in a fight or on purpose. Most of the torso was ripped away, baring an impressive continuation of the tattoos that lined her arms and neck. Her head was shaved, her face almost pixie-ish…if it didn't bear such an expression of fury and murder.

"The fuck are _you_?" she demanded, balanced on her toes like a jungle cat ready to spring. Shepard lowered her gun and put it away.

"Shepard," she introduced. "We're not your enemies. We're here to get you off this ship."

"You're fucking _Cerberus_," Jack said, spitting the name like it was coated in acid. Shepard narrowed her eyes.

"Say that again and I'll put your fucking teeth out," she growled, completely not intimidated even though this woman, biotically, could probably fold her into a tin can.

Jack snorted. _"Try."_

"Please don't tempt her," Kasumi murmured with amusement, but far too softly for the biotic to hear.

"That's a Cerberus ship," Jack spat. "Do you think I'm fucking _stupid_?"

"You're not convincing me otherwise," Shepard retorted. "Let's check the facts. This ship is coming apart. I have the only way off of it. I'm willing to take you with me, and you're _arguing._ That sound all that bright to _you_, honey?"

Jack's look was murderous, and Shepard held up her hands. "Look, here's the short version. I'm not Cerberus, but they _are_ funding me. I'm going after the Collectors and I need your help. You don't want to help, that's just fucking fine with me. We'll drop you off on the nearest planet and let you go on your own way. Or, you can stay here and go down with this prison. Either way, I'm getting back aboard that ship and leaving, _right now_. I don't fucking fancy dying…_again_."

Jack snorted, then lifted her chin. "What's in it for me? If I help you? What the fuck do _I_ get?"

"What do you want?"

"Records, files," Jack said instantly. "Bet your fancy ship has all sorts of Cerberus databases. I want access to everything they have on me."

"Done," Shepard said without hesitation.

"You better be straight with me," Jack threatened. Shepard nodded, then strode past her, heading toward the docking ramp.

"You coming?" she asked as Kasumi and Zaeed followed her, unsurprised when she heard the convict's bare feet padding along behind them.

As soon as her boot hit the deck, Shepard was barking orders. "Joker, get us unclamped and out of here! Miranda, we got any hostiles to worry about?"

"Their fighters were unable to launch, Shepard," Miranda reported, her professional demeanor unflagging. "There are several escape pods that have jettisoned but no hostiles."

"Good, as soon as we're clear notify anyone within range that the _Purgatory_ is going down. Then get us out of this system. Kelly, find some better clothes for our new guest and get her a place to bunk down."

She continued on, heading toward the lift. Chambers nodded, watching her. "Where are you going?"

"Doc's," Shepard said as she stepped within and turned around. "And Kelly…if I were you I'd make sure the clothes were Cerberus free."

"Yes, ma'am," Kelly replied as the lift door snapped shut.

"Was she injured?" Miranda asked, glancing over at Zaeed as she headed for a console, barely looking at the bald, tattooed woman who was looking around the CIC with intense scrutiny.

"No, she flashed," Zaeed replied. Miranda paused, blinking at him.

"Flashed? Her symptoms have always followed other paths. She has no history of flashbacks."

"Yeah, well…_dying_ tends to change history," he replied sarcastically.

* * *

><p>"Shepard, it's all right," Chakwas said patiently, regarding the woman sitting on the bio-bed as she gathered a packet from a nearby drawer.<p>

"No, it's _not_," Shepard said tersely. "I flashed, Helen. Right in the middle of a goddamn firefight. I could have gotten my people killed."

"But you didn't. You also didn't turn into a pink unicorn and run around farting rainbows."

It was said with such seriousness that Shepard half-choked a laugh, staring at Chakwas as if she'd grown a second head. The woman turned around, packet in her hand, and walked over.

"Did you just say-"

"Pink unicorn," Helen replied evenly. "Farting rainbows. Yes, I did."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Exactly. Fretting over the fact that something _might_ have happened, which didn't, is just as silly as worrying that something _will_ happen, that obviously won't."

Shepard groaned and rubbed her head. "Fuck," she declared. "Why flashes? Why now?"

"You died in a vacuum, Shepard," Chakwas told her. "Right after an attack on a ship. Explosions, alarms, notifications of hull breaches, adrenaline…it _happens_. Our job is to make sure it doesn't happen again. Fortunately for you, flashes are the easiest symptom of PTSD to treat." She lifted the packet she had retrieved. "You know what this is?"

"Little greens," Shepard sighed in resignation.

"One per day, anywhere on your upper body, and voila…no more flashes."

She opened the packet, taking out a tiny green patch the size of an old-fashioned pencil eraser. Removing its backing, she pressed it to Shepard's neck, high up and close to the hair-line. As she lowered her hands again, passing the packet to Shepard, she shook her head.

"Be thankful it's not like it was in the twentieth. You'd have to live with this, probably be forced to retire. They had no idea how to treat it back then, barely understood it's mechanics. Sadly, your anger is not so easily cured but…well, you can't have everything."

Shepard rubbed a hand on her face, her look brooding. Chakwas tilted her head. "Shepard, be proud."

Dark brows knit as the commander looked at her. "_Proud_?"

"I know how closely you wore your scars," she murmured, then lifted her brows slightly. "Not all scars are worn on the _skin_. Be proud of each one, inside or out. Both show what you've endured and survived, and you are stronger for each of them."

Shepard's look turned thoughtful, before she muttered, "Thanks, Doc."

"That's what I'm here for," Chakwas responded. "Well, that, and to bring some dashing good looks to the crew, wouldn't you agree?"

Shepard smirked, then winked. "Flirt."

"Tease."

"How do you know I'm _teasing_ if you never give me a chance to give it up?" Shepard joked, hopping off the bio-bed, sliding the pack of greens into her pocket.

Chakwas laughed, faking a sigh of lament. "If only I were twenty years younger and you were actually sane…and a _man_."

"_Ouch_," Shepard grinned, shaking her head.

The infirmary door opened, revealing Miranda. As she strode in, Chakwas smiled at her. "She's all yours, Ms. Lawson. Five by and ready for any bad news you might have."

As the doctor returned to her desk, Shepard looked warily at her XO. "It's not _actually_ bad news, is it? Because I know a good place to hide bodies."

"No, no bad news," Miranda replied. "We're heading out of system, Jack is being settled in. I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"Nothing wrong with me a lot of fucking drugs or a bullet won't cure," Shepard replied. "Oh, I did have a request. Connect to the ship database, would you? Jack wants any and all files regarding her that we might have."

She started to step past toward the door as Miranda dropped her folded arms, staring. "Wh-_what_?"

Shepard looked back at her, lifting her brows. "Files? Jack? Not clear? Do I need to say it in semaphore?"

"You told her we'd give her access to Cerberus records on her?" Miranda asked, horrified.

"I did," Shepard answered, turning to fully face her, folding her own arms. "That's what she wants in return for her lovely services on our mission. Why? That a problem?"

"You can't just _do_ that, Commander," Miranda retorted. "Those are classified Cerberus materials-"

What joviality Shepard had remaining turned instantly to stone, eyes going hard. "I am the commanding officer aboard this ship, Miranda," she said firmly. "Jack seems to have a very bad history with Cerberus…not that _that's_ a fucking surprise. She-"

She paused, scrutinizing Miranda's face a moment, before she straightened. "Wait. You _know_ what she's looking for, don't you? What do you know about Jack's connection with Cerberus?"

"I-" Miranda started to protest, before Shepard's face went hard again. She stiffened a little, deciding honesty was probably the best policy. "To be absolutely frank, Commander…not much," she admitted. "Mostly that she was connected to some project involving Dr. Gellian Osco and that Osco has been looking for her. The files themselves didn't interest me enough to dig any deeper."

"Osco…" Shepard frowned a little. "I know that name from somewhere…"

"I'm not surprised. She had close recent connections with Saren and Matriarch Benezia. She was involved in the krogan project on Virmire and, as I understand it, took a pot-shot at you on Noveria."

It clicked. Liara _had_ mentioned the name before, describing the human woman as some kind of sociopath that Benezia had taken under her wing…a genius but suffering a type of genetic affliction of the brain.

Then the last of what Miranda said registered and she blinked. "Wait, _Osco_ was the one who shot me on Noveria? The civvie we couldn't find?"

"According to some surveillance Cerberus liberated from the research facility after your encounters there, yes," Miranda told her. "I'm not surprised she eluded you. Osco is not a soldier but she _is_ a killer, she _thinks_ like a killer, and her IQ surpasses even mine."

"That shot at me was reckless, hasty," Shepard protested. "I was oblivious to her, had no helmet on. Shooting me in the chest instead of the head when she had time to line up the perfect shot seems sloppy at best. Stupid, not…crazy smart."

"Well, you'd just killed Benezia, the only person that Osco trusted. There were even rumors that they were involved intimately. I think it's a safe conclusion to make that her shot at you was based purely upon emotion and not rational thought."

Shepard shook her head, trying to process all this. "And Osco is connected to Jack?"

"In some way, yes," Miranda shrugged. "What I just told you is all I know on that particular matter. As for Osco, the woman is a plague. I was nothing but happy the day she left Cerberus and if I never see her again, it will be too soon."

Shepard's jaw tightened, and she nodded, straightening. "Get those files," she ordered. "Download them onto a data pad and give them to Jack. I also want a copy sent to my terminal upstairs. I've never met this woman but if she really did try to kill me I want to know everything about her."

"I cannot get you _everything_ about her, Shepard," Miranda sounded exasperated. "Look, all right. I'll do what I can, but clearance to access most of Osco's files are above even my pay grade."

"And Jack's files?" Shepard pressed.

"Fine, Shepard. If that's what you promised her…then all right. I'll see what I can do."

"Good."

* * *

><p>Eír was somewhat surprised when reality returned, bringing with it no lingering pain. Her muscles ached only slightly, nothing compared to the fire that had burned through them before.<p>

She was on her bedroll in the cave, a fire burning nearby and the rich smell of meat filling the air. From the light outside, it was late afternoon. She couldn't have been out for more than a couple of hours.

Opening her eyes, she turned to face the fire. Shrive was seated beside it. She had changed from her protective wraps and now wore her functional leather pants and a short vest. The garment did nothing to hide the shape of her neck and shoulders, her well-defined arms and torso, as she poked at the fire. The golden light outlined her features, flaring her white face-paint orange.

Shrive was not ostentatious about her face markings. The small amount she applied accented her features, following the natural planes of her cheek and forehead. Eír had seen some asari, both in pictures and since coming to Tuchanka (though they were few here) who indulged in marking themselves until they looked clownish, gaudy. Not so with Shrive.

_I wonder why it upset mother so much when I wanted to paint my face, too,_ she thought, recalling Gellian's inexplicable ire…and her demand that the next time Eír had her knife in hand, to be sure to cut Shrive's throat.

She touched her own cheeks lightly, brows knitting. She had washed the paint off, after Gellian's display, and had not dared to reapply it. Just another thing that separated her from the experienced hunter.

Her gaze shifted from the asari at the fire, to her pack beside her bedroll. Her skinning dagger was there, within easy reach. Thoughts began to move behind her eyes.

_I could extract it easily, silently, before she knows I'm awake. Her back is mostly to me. If I'm careful, I could be upon her before she was aware. _

Her fingers stole out toward the handle, then paused a moment before they drifted away again, and she sat up. The motion caught Shrive's attention, and the older girl glanced over.

"The meat is almost done," she said softly. "You should eat."

Eír nodded faintly, her mouth watering at the rich smells. "You went hunting?" she asked.

"No," Shrive replied. "I brought a few small supplies, in case our hunt was unsuccessful. The varren steaks were frozen but should still be somewhat flavorful."

Eír nodded again, ever so faintly, her brooding eyes watching the flames. "I did not beat it," she said at last. "The pain…"

"You will," Shrive told her simply. "I did not succeed on my first attempt, either."

"I want to try again."

"Tomorrow," Shrive agreed. "Or you will be too weak for the hunt in the morning, even if you triumph."

Finally rising from her bed, feeling more shaky than anything else, she moved over to the fire and sat. Shrive plucked up a plate, maneuvering one of the thick steaks onto it along with a portion of mashed kivkiv root. The root was bitter, but then nearly all food on Tuchanka was strong of flavor, heavily leaning toward bitter, sour, and spicy.

Shrive did not seem overly inclined toward conversation, and Eír as well said nothing as they ate. Her mind was on that cinch, on her dagger, and on what her mother had instructed.

_Shrive has mastered the pain of the cinch_, she thought. _But it will still hobble her abilities. She will be unable to use her biotics, and I can weaken her with the pain. I just need to get hold of the cinch and the cube…that will be the tricky part. Unless she's particularly careless, I don't know that I can. Shrive has ears like a varren and eyes like a redal hawk. I absolutely must take her by surprise, wait for the opportune moment. I must be ready the instant it presents itself, no matter when that might be. That means having my dagger on me at all times, even when I sleep._

Her deep eyes shifted slightly, as she watched the ghosts of smoke writhing in the dancing flames.


	19. Chapter 19

The sound of boots on the metal steps was muffled but distinct, and would announce anyone's arrival clearly enough. Shepard ducked her head a little as she reached level ground, her face bathed in a dim red light.

The maintenance sub-deck was the lowest part of the _Normandy_, if one disregarded a few small crawl-spaces. Directly below engineering, it allowed access to the heavy power systems of the mass effect core for routine maintenance and in case of catastrophic emergency, but it was neither made for aesthetics nor permanent occupancy.

Shepard was not the tallest of woman, but even she could not stand straight for all the pipes and power access-ways lining the ceiling. Head lowered a little she took a few more steps, rounding the corner toward the core.

Jack stood illuminated in the ruby light emanating from the core-drive's base, facing it with her back toward Shepard. She was in the process of changing, that bare back showing a diverse map of tattoos etched over sinewy muscle.

She had traded her thin, torn prison fatigues for a pair of cargo pants and heavy boots. As Shepard caught sight of her she pulled up the dark vest she'd been putting on, settling it over her shoulders. She half-glanced around as she began to lace it up.

"This pit the best Chambers could do?" Shepard asked, disbelieving.

"No," Jack replied. "I _wanted_ to be down here. No traffic, close and dark…at least, I _thought_ there wasn't any traffic."

She gave Shepard a punctuating glare, finished lacing the vest, and turned to sit on a small cot that had been set up. "Fuck you want, anyway?"

"Yeah, fuck you too," Shepard said casually, then flung her arm out. Something silver glimmered in the ruby light a moment before Jack nimbly snagged it out of the air. She looked suspiciously at the flask before she spun the top.

"What's this for?"

"Figured you've been on that ship a long time, and could use a drink," Shepard told her, leaning on one of the struts and making no move to walk further into the maintenance space. "It's whiskey. From my own stash, which I guard like fucking _gold_, so you're welcome."

Jack tipped the flask against her lips, taking a swallow, and then giving a shuddering sigh of almost ecstasy a moment, before lowering it again. "Good shit," she approved.

"Thanks," Shepard told her.

"Now where are my fucking files?"

"Miranda Lawson, my XO, is putting them together. You don't have them by tonight, you let me know and I'll put them in your hands myself."

"The Cerberus cheerleader I saw earlier on deck," Jack snorted bitterly. "Looks like she'd cry if she broke a fucking nail."

"Miranda's tougher than she looks," Shepard told her.

"Whatever, I ain't here to be fucking friends. You get me those files, I'll do the job, and then as far as I'm concerned you all can go fuck yourselves."

"You're not even curious why we're going after the Collectors?"

"No. I'm just glad to be out of that pit." Then she eyed Shepard. "You said you weren't Cerberus, right? So why the fuck are _you_ here?"

"Long, complicated story," Shepard said. "Short version is I'm using whatever money and resources the Illusive Man wants to throw my way to achieve my own goals…and when I'm done, they can go fuck themselves too."

Jack snorted, taking another shot of the whiskey before spinning the lid back on and pitching the flask back at Shepard, who caught it.

"You talk a big talk…Shepard, was it? Act like you got balls. We'll see if you really do, or if you're just a pussy who likes to front."

_{Commander Shepard, Kasumi would like to see you in the observation room,}_ Kelly's voice filled the air. Shepard nodded.

"On my way." She tucked the half empty flask into her back pocket, then looked at Jack. "I'll talk to you later, after you get those files."

"Yeah, can't fuckin' wait," Jack said sarcastically, laying back against the cot.

Turning, Shepard headed back up to engineering, then toward the lift. As it rose, she pulled the flask out, opened it, and took a belt of her own before tucking it away again.

Emerging on the crew deck, she headed toward the starboard observation room where Kasumi had bunked. As she entered, she noted the woman had done a bit more unpacking and settling in. Light but spirited music was playing, and several strange objects were scattered about.

Seeing Shepard glance at them as she turned away from the tiny bar, Kasumi smiled. "A few trophies from my more interesting jobs. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all. I was never really into art and sculpture myself. That was more Lia-…well, not important. You wanted to see me?"

"There's a story there," Kasumi stated, then shook her head. "But I won't press. I received a message from one of my contacts. It was waiting for me when we came back aboard. Looks like we'll be able to get Keiji's greybox back sooner than I had expected. Donovan Hock is having little get-together at his home…him and fifty of his dirtiest friends. It's in four days time, on Bekenstein. It may just provide the perfect opportunity to sneak in and get into his vault."

"Lots of people around, lots of distractions to take advantage of-" Shepard started to nod in approval, then paused as something registered. "Wait…you said 'get-together'. Like a party?"

Kasumi smiled. "Not just a _party_, Shep…a _formal dress_ party."

Fumbling for her back pocket, Shepard pulled out the flask again and took another belt of whiskey. Kasumi's smile only grew slightly wider and more devious as she folded her arms, regarding the look on Shepard's face.

"You _can_ walk in heels, can't you?"

The groan Shepard let out as she dropped into a sit on the small sofa almost sounded like one of pain. She looked up at Kasumi, her forehead wrinkled. "Can't Cerberus just…just _pay_ you?"

The other woman straightened, walking over and sitting down beside her. "C'mon, Shep. You know what this means to me. It won't be all that bad. I can have an invitation and a cover identity for you by tonight, and it'll be so rock-solid by the time of the party that it will take Donovan years of working to find proof that it's fake. I will be with you the whole time, under cloak."

"Well, why can't _I_ be the one under cloak, and _you_ can wear the heels?" Shepard protested. Kasumi shook her head.

"Won't work. If there's even the slimmest chance that Hock has a picture or even a solid physical description of me, we'll be gunned down before we get out of the driveway."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Shepard huffed, slumping. She rattled the flask, hoping to hear more whiskey inside, but she had drained it. "_Fuck twice_!"

"Anyone ever tell you that you're adorable when you swear?" Kasumi teased. Shepard looked at her balefully.

"Fine. So what do we do?" she asked in weary resignation.

"I'll hammer out a concrete plan to a polished finish by the time we reach the planet. The _Normandy_ can stay in orbit and we can shuttle in toward the opposite end of the colony, then rent a limo to take us to Hock's front door. Oh, _after_ I pick you up something appropriate to wear. Hopefully we can get in and out without a shot fired but just in case…I'll come up with a contingency to- _oh_! Yes, that might work…"

Her eyes went far away and bright at the same time, as a thought occurred to her.

"What?"

"A few years back, a sculptor on Palaven made a gorgeous statue of a turian. It was supposed to go on display at the Regional Center in the city of Kalavet to honor the turian's status and achievements as a Spectre. Unfortunately, before it could be moved to the site and unveiled, some naughty little thief made off with it."

"Wonder who _that_ was?" Shepard smirked.

"The thing is _gorgeous_, Shep. Almost solid gold and seven feet tall. How could I resist?" Kasumi winked. "It has a marble base with a secure slot. It was supposed to contain the armor that turian wore during one of his more famous missions…turians like to do that with their statues, they think it adds honor. The drawer is perfectly concealed. Had it fulfilled its original purpose, once it was closed with the armor inside, a plaque would have been affixed over it and it never would have been opened again. We can use it for the same purpose. Conceal your hard-suit and some sturdy guns inside along with a small masking device that will prevent all scans from detecting them."

With every word she spoke, her eyes got brighter as the plan formulated in her head. "_Yes_, you can present the statue as a gift to Hock…he'll be getting several from his more slimy compatriots, tributes to his greatness. He'll take it right to the vault, and once we get inside, you'll have your armor and weapons ready, in case things turn bad. Not to mention, I _love_ the irony."

"Irony?" Shepard asked, confused.

"That turian Spectre I mentioned? The one that statue was made of? It's Saren Arterius."

Shepard stared at her, and Kasumi shrugged. "Granted, I stole it a year before he went rogue and the entire mess with the Citadel went down. Probably a good thing I snagged it, otherwise it'd be in some garbage heap somewhere, covered in graffiti and spit…_if_ it was lucky."

Shepard sat back. Kasumi was right, it was a strange irony. The man she had chased and fought so hard to bring down would now be _helping_ her…if only in effigy.

"And how do we get _in_ to the vault?"

"_That_ I'll have to figure out once we've seen it," Kasumi told her. "I need to get a look at it in person and see what security systems it has in place. Once we figure that out, we figure out the best way to bypass it."

"What if you can't?"

Kasumi laughed. "Please, I'm the best in the business. There isn't a vault made I can't get into."

Shepard wiped a hand over her face, then nodded. "All right. I did promise," she said. "Make the arrangements, and I'll tell Joker to head in that direction. It's going to take us a couple days to get there, anyway. Might as well get it over with."

"Excellent. I'll contact my friend and have the statue moved and waiting for us. Thank you, Shepard. This means a lot to me."

"Yeah well, I'm not sure you helping me chase the Collectors is going to be payment enough for having to wear a fucking dress and heels but…you're welcome. Hock better hope he behaves himself, because I guarantee that by the end of the night I will _definitely_ be in the mood to break some necks."

* * *

><p>Muscles corded rhythmically, tauting to steel beneath damp ebony, damp tan. Sweat glimmered along a dark scalp, glistening amongst tight black curls shaved close to the skin, as Jacob grit his teeth.<p>

Wet locks also clung to tan cheeks, shoulders, forehead, perspiration trailing down temples, and dripping from her chin to the metal floor of engineering.

"He hasn't got a chance," Donnelly declared.

"Are you kidding me, Ken?" Daniels scoffed. "Look at those muscles!"

"I try _not_ te look at the muscles of other blokes, if ye don't mind," he teased.

"Why, afraid you might like them?"

"Wench! C'mon, Commander! Teach hem a lesson!"

The two engineers weren't the only ones gathered in the room. Whistles, cheers, and friendly bets were passing around several of the crew. Neither was theirs the only argument. Mordin and Chakwas stood shoulder to shoulder, just beside a silent Miranda who was observing with her arms folded.

"Physical impossibility," Mordin was shaking his head. "Muscles still not to optimum performance. Further month of intense training, could possibly come close."

"Shepard makes a living on impossibilities," Chakwas sniffed. "She hasn't come upon anything yet that can put a stop to her, even death."

"Irrelevant. Battle-field strategy, survival instinct, different. Loser here does not die, no lives at stake, nothing to protect. No overstimulation of adrenaline. Matter will be decided by simple biology. He pushes daily, top shape, suffered no set-backs. She is still recovering, starts from a position of disadvantage." He stopped and took a breath, folding his arms. "Odds in his favor."

"I can't wait to see you _eat_ those words, Mordin," Helen smirked, then called out. "C'mon Shepard!"

The pair were in the middle of the deck. Shepard wore her yoga pants and a black sports bra under a loose gray tank, her dripping hair only loosely tied back. The gold cross around her neck hung toward the deck, pooling on the metal with every downward arc, swinging slightly with every upward. The red scarring from her dermal regeneration had finally faded, only a few tiny lines remaining on her back and shoulders and around her temples, and her color had returned to a healthier shade. Her muscle tone had greatly improved, finally showing definition but still a distance away from where she had been before her restoration.

She was shoulder to shoulder with Jacob, the two doing push-ups in almost perfect sync. Jacob was in tip-top condition. Bare from the waist up, his torso seemed almost carved in ebony. Though he had a good three inches on the commander and followed a strict and rather heavy exercise regimen daily, so far she was keeping pace with him push for push.

The count had reached well into triple digits already, both competitors grit-toothed and streaming with sweat, yet neither showed signs of stopping.

A few minutes later the strain finally began to show, each now clearly struggling to continue on. As it became obvious they were slowing the cheers and calls only grew louder, each crewman urging on his particular choice.

Then, it happened. Both were hefting frantically, uttering muffled cries of determination between their teeth. Shepard got halfway up a final time, then slumped back to the deck with a surrendering cry of frustration. Jacob barely managed to complete a final repetition, sealing his position as victor.

The uproar from the crew was thunderous as Shepard groaned and gasped for breath, before weakly looking over at Jacob, who was also now laying on his stomach in exhausted misery.

"Fuck," she declared. "How many…fucking push-ups…do you _do_ every day?"

He smiled. "Let's just say…I think I reached my quota…for the next _week_…"

Rolling onto her back she lay there limp, one hand draped over her stomach as several crewmen came over to help Jacob up, lauding over their winnings and raining praise down upon him. Shepard's free hand waved in weak circles in the air before it, too, dropped down to her stomach. "Huzzah huzzah," she mumbled. "No…it's ok…I'm just gonna die right here…thanks for caring…"

Chakwas moved over to her, crouching with a sad smile. "It was close, Shepard."

"Yeah," the panting woman grinned, looking at her before her gaze shifted to Mordin, who was standing behind her. "Which one…of you…bet against me?"

"He did," Chakwas betrayed with a smirk at the salarian.

"Ok…you're fired…Mordin…damn traitor…"

The man just smiled, and Shepard managed a weak laugh.

Her mirth vanished into a groan as another form crouched in front of her, a hand lowering to offer her help up. "_Oh, no_…" she lamented. "You're _back_."

"I am," Kasumi smiled. "Sorry I missed all the fun. Your things are up in the Nest, Shepard. You have time to shower and change."

"Can't…" she protested weakly. "Dead…."

"Never stopped you before. C'mon. Up we go."

Shepard took the offered hand, allowing Kasumi to pull her to her feet. Chakwas passed her a water bottle and Shepard took a healthy swig from it before dumping half over her the back of her head, then wiping her face.

"All right, shower and…_clothes_," Shepard grimaced.

"There are cosmetics as well," Kasumi offered. Shepard groaned again, and the small thief laughed. Shepard managed a grin at her, slapping her lightly on the shoulder, before lumbering out of engineering and onto the lift.

Almost the instant that the doors closed, any hint of amusement or levity on her face vanished. It was an act that was getting harder and harder to maintain. She hated every second of it, always having to pretend around the crew, to act like nothing was wrong when it felt like she had a huge rent in her very heart and soul. But she couldn't risk behaving any other way. If any hint that she hadn't put Liara behind her reached the Illusive Man it might put the asari at horrible risk…more risk than she might _already_ be in.

_Soon. Zaeed or Garrus have_ got _to come up with something_ soon. _And this trip will, at the very least, give me a chance to talk to Kasumi, get more eyes out looking. Please…whatever god or goddess or weird pan-dimensional karma-beast might be listening…let it be soon._

* * *

><p>The shuttle was waiting, powered on and idling in the <em>Normandy<em>'s cargo deck. The ship was in orbit around Bekenstein and the plan was to have Joker pilot them down to the far end of the colony, where a rental limo complete with chauffer was waiting to take them to Hock's place.

Kasumi was waiting with Miranda as Joker did a final exterior check of the craft, the thief glancing at her omni-tool's chronometer, and then toward the lift just as the doors parted.

"Good, right on time. And it fits," Kasumi smiled. "I was worried I didn't have your size exactly right, even with the body scan."

"Wow. Not bad, Commander," Miranda commented as Shepard stepped off the lift and walked toward them. "I'd have hardly recognized you if I didn't know."

Despite Kasumi's concerns, Shepard actually walked rather elegantly on heels. Miranda, however, was right…she looked like a completely different person.

The dress was black and shimmered faintly as the light moved over it. It was off the left shoulder and ankle-length, split almost scandalously high on the right hip. Form fitting, the dress showed that Shepard actually had a rather alluring build, outlining her waist and her hips and perfectly framing a hardly-shameful cleavage. Her long hair was elegantly draped over her shoulders, pulled slightly back on one side with a diamond clip Kasumi had acquired. As well she wore a pair of tiny diamond studs, a bracelet, and stunning necklace. Her makeup was flawless.

"You did all that on your own?" Miranda asked, impressed. Shepard lifted a brow with a slight tilt to her head.

"I'm not _entirely_ unfeminine, you know," she said dryly.

"Kelly helped, didn't she?" Miranda asked, not buying it.

"_Maybe_," Shepard hedged, then smirked. "I have to say, whoever the bastard was that invented heels should be fucking _shot_. These are outlawed torture devices in some sectors, you know?"

Joker, who had come around from the nose of the shuttle out of curiosity, was standing nearby, staring unabashedly, his mouth hanging open. As Shepard glanced over at him he slowly drew his hand out of his pocket, lifting it to reveal a slim camera in his palm a breath before he snapped a picture.

As the flash went off Shepard's eyes narrowed dangerously and Joker gave a nervous grin, taking a step backward.

"I'll just be…uh…inside," he said hastily, and disappeared into the shuttle before she could get it into her head to murder him.

"Well, we'd best be going," Kasumi said, drawing Shepard's attention away from the pilot. "You do look great though. You should wear this stuff more often."

"_Never again_ often enough for you, Goto?"

"I'm just impressed she's not armed," Miranda stated. Shepard gave her a lopsided grin.

"Who says I'm _not_ armed?" she asked, before turning and striding into the shuttle.

* * *

><p>In the back of the shuttle, and away from Joker's gapes and teasing comments that likely would have gotten his nose broken again, Kasumi passed Shepard a data pad. "Your new identity," she said. "You are going to be Alison Gunn, an up and comer who leads a small but talented group of mercenaries. Some of my contacts seeded intel through several different channels…you are on the guest list and Hock <em>will<em> have heard of you. Not that it will matter. The moment he sees you he's going to be tripping over his own tongue."

Shepard snorted, glancing over the intel. "Guess I'm going to have to watch the swearing. And the drinking. Fun times all around."

"I do really appreciate this," Kasumi said softly. "Even the hope of getting that greybox back…"

Shepard nodded her understanding. Possible classified weapons-tech or not those memories were precious, and she couldn't say that she'd be any different were it some part of Liara.

By the time the shuttle landed, Shepard had memorized what she needed to know from 'Gunn's' profile. As Joker took the transport back up towards the _Normandy_, Shepard and a cloaked Kasumi entered the rented limo, the former blinking in surprise a moment when the chauffer offered his hand to help her into the air car.

Once inside, she closed the divider, sealing the back passenger area and making it not only impossible to see in, but soundproof as well. With no chance of the driver realizing she was there, Kasumi uncloaked again.

Shepard felt tense, uncomfortable in her own skin. She hated gowns and make-up, both installing in her a sense of almost paranoia. They drew too much attention, and despite what others might think, Shepard was generally one to _avoid_ attention whenever she could.

Her fingers kept brushing at the ends of her long hair, rearranging them and then rearranging them again.

"Relax," Kasumi urged gently. "It's only for a little while."

Shepard nodded, then looked at the small thief. "There was something I wanted to talk about, now that we're away from the _Normandy_. Something kind of…under the table."

"My favorite kind of something," Kasumi replied. "What is it?"

"I know this is the only payment you asked for but the Collector mission isn't the only operation I need your help on. I want to hire you on for a secondary objective…pure research, nothing more."

"Intriguing…what kind of research?"

"When you asked me before, if I had lost someone…I didn't answer completely," Shepard admitted. "I did lose Nan and Paul but…there is someone else. Someone I'm trying to find. Cerberus is trying to keep us apart. They sent me a fake 'Dear Jane' letter hoping I wouldn't keep pursuing it but…well, let's just say I wasn't fooled."

"Why would they do that?" Kasumi asked in concern.

"I don't know, but I'm afraid that if I keep looking for her they'll take more _drastic_ measures to make sure I don't find her, if you get my meaning. I don't dare discuss this aboard the ship…the Illusive Man probably has it bugged a thousand ways to Sunday-"

"Oh, he does," Kasumi affirmed. "Hard to fool a thief used to spotting the tiniest cameras and listening devices. I found three in the observation room alone."

"Exactly. I just want to find a location, find out where she is. Rumor is that she's working for the Shadow Broker, that he's keeping her under cover but I don't know that I trust _anything_ that comes from Mr. Illusive's mouth. Garrus and Zaeed are both using their contacts to try and find her and I would appreciate it if you would as well. I'll pay you anything you want-"

"No need, Shepard," Kasumi held up her hand. "Star-crossed lovers kept apart by evil forces of darkness…the romantic in me is absolutely _steaming_. Of _course_ I'll help. What's her name?"

"Dr. Liara T'Soni."

"Really?" Kasumi looked pleasantly surprised. "Well, Shepard…I can't tell you where she currently is, I don't have that information, but I can reassure you she is most certainly _not_ working for the Shadow Broker."

Shepard sat forward, eyes widening. "You _know_ Liara?"

"Professional basis," she said. "She's provided me with intelligence a time or two. We met in person just once, briefly. Sweet girl, very lovely. Seemed a bit sad though, lonely…I guess now I understand why. I can see why you're smitten."

"What's she doing?" Shepard asked. "You said intelligence, but…she's not a broker agent?"

"No," Kasumi replied. "She is a broker herself, though on a smaller scale than the Shadow Man. Seems to hate him, actually. Seemed rather spirited on the subject."

"Hate him? Why?"

"No idea. Like I said, our meeting was brief and professional. It was on…Kadavas, if I remember correctly, but she was only passing through, as was I. I doubt she's there, but I'm certain I can get in contact with her again, given enough time. With Cerberus lurking about, sadly I won't really be able to work from aboard ship, but if we get a chance to go groundside for any length of time I'll be right on it."

Shepard closed her eyes a moment, nodding as she sat back. "Thank you. If she's moved on or…found someone else, I can accept that, deal with it somehow. I just need to make sure she's ok, talk to her again, the _real_ her…if even just for a few minutes. I need to tell her I'm sorry."

Reaching forward Kasumi took Shepard's hand, clasping it gently with a squeeze of comfort, before she felt the shift in the air car's engine. Sitting back, she looked out the one-way windows, nodding.

"We're here. Time for me to go dark. You have your ear-bud in?"

Shepard nodded, touching the all but invisible bud nestled in her ear canal. "Check."

"I won't be able to talk much above a whisper once we're inside, but I'll have you in my sights at all times."

The limo settled with a faint bump, and Kasumi touched the cloak on her belt. "Good luck," she said with a final wink, before shimmering into non-being.

* * *

><p>During the following morning's hunt, Eír was unusually cooperative, following Shrive's lead and direction perfectly, and never once attempting to light her biotics. They tracked a small pack of wild varren for a short distance before flawlessly singling out and separating one of them. After that, it was only a matter of a few minutes before they had it down, Eír achieving her first kill as she shot the beast in the head, dropping him in his tracks.<p>

Hauling him back to camp was hard work and though the hour was not yet noon, both women were damp with sweat when they finally arrived. After the beast had been skinned and gutted, Shrive directed Eír to put its tongue, eyes, livers and hearts into a large pot, while she packed the rest of the offal in a cryo-box. With the skin laid out to dry in the sun, its head propped up outside the cave in a grim trophy, the pair of women speared the body and hefted it above the fire to roast. They would not, of course, be nearly able to eat the entire beast but the cooked meat would keep until they returned home the following evening.

The pot of delectables boiling, varren roasting, the cave was soon filled with mouthwatering smells. As it had been Eír's kill, she had done most of the bloody work, and was filthy as a result. Shrive, by contrast, didn't have a speck on her though she had hardly been idle.

Eír went outside to the well to wash up and change while Shrive continued to tend to the food. She took her dagger with her, fulfilling her vow to continue to have the weapon on her at all times until she was able to defeat Shrive…a goal that the young girl could not have guessed would be accomplished as quickly as it was.

Redressed in cleaner and cooler garb than the beige wraps, she blinked a little as she stepped from bright sunlight into the dark cave, waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust. Shrive was crouched over the boiling pot of offal, the rich smell of blood-rich meat filling the air. She had added something to thicken the blood and water it was boiling in to almost oatmeal consistency, and was narrow-eyed with concentration.

She half turned her head as Eír came in, then gestured idly with one hand toward her bedroll. "It's time to take this off the heat and let it cool. Can you bring me the powdered tibla please?"

Eír nodded and turned toward the bedroll, eyes at first fixed on the small assortment of dried leaves, powders, and other spices that Shrive had laid out nearby. After only a step or two, however, her eyes landed on Shrive's open pack and a thrill of nerves sang through her.

The cinch was there, half-buried among the other items. She could see just a few links but it was unmistakable.

_The cube? Where is the cube?_

Hoping her split second pause hadn't betrayed her, she crouched and began to rummage through the spices, doing her best to visually search the open pack out of the corner of her eye as she did so. She did not see the cube.

_Maybe she has it on her_, she thought, and risked a look over at the older girl, still busy with the pot. She had only a few seconds left before Shrive would wonder why it was taking her so long to get the requested herb, and glance over. Her gut still in a knot, Eír glanced her over, then looked back at the pack. The cube was not on Shrive. She would've had to have it in hand, or in a pocket, given its size and shape. There were no pockets in her leather trousers, nor in her vest, and her hands were occupied with the stew. It _had_ to be in the pack.

Now was the time. Eír had to take a risk now or let the opportunity slip past…an opportunity that might never present itself again.

Reaching into the pack, she gripped hold of the cinch and drew it out. As she did, she spotted the cube and her stomach leapt up, her throat almost closing in shock. Snatching hold of it she tugged two of the cinch links apart even as she straightened, turning back toward Shrive.

The loop opened easily, leaving the length of silver links in her grip. She took two steps toward Shrive when the girl abruptly straightened to her feet, turning around. "Eír? Where's that-" she started to say, then broke off as Eír's hand flung out, the cinch whipping around and closing.

Just that fast, Shrive was not only cut off from her biotics but also the use of her arms, the cinch binding them tightly to her sides. To her credit, however, she did not gape in fear or gasp in shock. Shrive was every inch a cunning fighter and her reflexes were second to none. The moment she realized what had happened, the moment Eír's smile had even started to begin, Shrive danced up and landed a flutter kick firmly to the other girl's chin.

Eír saw stars as her feet left the ground. She crashed hard enough to the rock to feel her air erupt from her, and instinctively rolled to one side, narrowly missing the heel of Shrive's boot as the other woman kicked at her face.

Darting to her feet Eír knew she could not flag. Shrive was half-hobbled but far from gentled, and wise enough to not even attempt use of her biotics while cinched. To do so would only charge it, leaving Eír open to shock her senseless.

Whirling just as fast as Eír leapt up, Shrive sent a roundhouse kick toward the side of the girl's face, nearly sending her off her feet again. Eír lightly tasted blood from the strike as she darted away, around to the other side of the fire. Her trousers _did_ have pockets, and she jammed the cube into one as she drew her dagger.

"I am greatly weakened and still you run away?" Shrive goaded lightly, her eyes fixed on Eír's through the dancing flames, past the roasting varren.

"I don't run," Eír said in a low, venomous tone. Walking back around the fire but not within kicking distance, she lifted her hand, the handle of the dagger gripped tightly with the blade laying against her forearm, cutting edge out.

The two moved toward each other almost as if obeying some telepathic cue. Shrive whirled another kick toward Eír's head but the girl ducked beneath it, close enough to feel the wind pass over her crest. Leaping forward she rolled past the older asari girl, planted her hands, and mule-kicked backward, striking Shrive hard in the belly with both feet even as the woman landed from her kick. A loud bark of expressed air punctuated Shrive stumbling backward. She barely managed to maintain her feet but even as she reoriented, Eír was upon her.

A fist lashed into her face. Having grown up with krogan half-brothers, Shrive well knew how to take a hit but she was still off balance and the hit only kept her so. She stumbled back a few more paces, then more as Eír hit her again.

When her back slammed into the rock wall of the cavern, momentarily stabilizing her, she hooked a foot out, the back of her heel colliding with the back of Eír's before she pulled and twisted. The younger asari fell back, instantly rolling to her side, bracing her hand on the ground. Her abdomen tensed and her foot lashed out into Shrive's gut again.

Slammed by the boot back into the wall only an inch behind her, Shrive's bark this time was ragged. She barely managed to keep her feet.

Then Eír was there. The heel of her free hand pressed hard to Shrive's forehead, arching the girl's head back slightly and keeping her skull pinned to the rock, her body similarly pinning Shrive's body tightly to the stone to prevent her escape or attack.

As sharp and gleaming as ice, the dagger pressed close to Shrive's throat, and for a moment they simply stood there. A thin trickle of blue blood ran from the corner of Eír's lips where Shrive had kicked her, the younger girl's teeth bared ferally.

"So," Shrive panted. "You _were_ listening to me all along, after all. You used your cunning, not just your strength, and not once did you use your biotics. I was afraid I was failing you as a teacher…I suppose I can die knowing differently."

Eír said nothing, the dagger moving a hairsbreadth closer, touching blue skin just a shade lighter than her own. Shrive's blue eyes were unafraid as they fixed to Eír's lavender.

"Go on," she relented. "I am bested. You have defeated me, fairly and with honor. I know that you have wanted this for a long time, Eír. Do it. Take your rightful trophy."

Another heartbeat, and the dagger moved, tumbling away from both Shrive's throat and Eír's fingers, clattering unheard on the younger asari lunged in, claiming the only trophy she wanted as she kissed the older insistently.


	20. Chapter 20

Author's Note: Beware the shmexy! The shmexy attacks when least expected! This chapter is infected with the shmexy! If you don't like the shmexy then look away before it is too late!

_Shmexy!_

Ok, yeah, that's my mature content warning. Course, this is going to most likely be fairly tame. I'm not that good with love scenes in general, so this isn't going to be like 'OMG the squick! Think of the children!' but…yeah. You haz a warning, just in case.

A shmexy warning.

…

I think I just like saying shmexy.

Oh, and before I forget…no, Kasumi's loyalty mission is not going to be exactly canon. As usual I've put my own spin on it and some things will deviate. Don't worry, the basic framework _will_ remain intact.

Now whether or not _Shepard_ will remains to be seen :D

* * *

><p>It was merely another form of battle, one both opponents met without hesitation. The kiss, joined with all vigor, was intense enough to threaten bruising. Shrive, who still pinned against the wall, nevertheless had an advantage over her opponent.<p>

Eír had been taught many things by the tank, by Gellian. Strongest of these was hatred, anger, both focused on the unseen demon that was Commander Delilah Shepard. Eír was, first and foremost, Gellian's weapon, forged for the purpose and honed with murder in mind. Concepts like friendship, love, creativity had been flimsily included at best. Eír was to be a flame of vengeance and then an unstoppable power in the galaxy, a being the likes of which no one had ever before seen. To reach this destiny, Osco had 'trimmed away the fat' with her tank imprints, so to speak.

Anger and hate were familiar emotions to Eír, so naturally when she had met Shrive, she had taken her turmoil of strong feelings as simply another aspect of hatred. Suffering humiliation almost immediately after introduction when the older girl had mocked and then defeated her, had only solidified in her head that what she felt was rage and a desire to kill.

Eír had no idea what was going on, no idea what attraction, love, or intimacy even was, beyond the most rudimentary of concepts. She was flying purely on instinct, and in that came Shrive's advantage.

Each moment the kiss continued on, a sort of power-play in its own right, it only grew more fierce…and it was a battle that Shrive was destined to win.

Bodies flush as Eír still had her pinned, it was slightly awkward but no horrible difficulty for the older girl to get her fingers into Eír's pocket and manage to touch the cube.

Metal slid with a faint rasping sound as the firm outward press of her arm separated links, freeing the cinch and letting it fall. No longer bound, Shrive reached up and grabbed handfuls of Eír's tunic, forcing the girl to move backward as she straightened from the wall. As the kiss broke, Eír's own grip dug into Shrive's biceps.

"What are you doing?" she panted almost indignantly. Shrive grinned, never stopping her forward motion as Eír continued backward.

"What do you _want_?" Shrive asked in return. Eír glowered, letting go of Shrive's arms to grip hold of her fists, pulling them loose and shoving her arms aside. Lunging forward again, her arms wound around Shrive's torso and she kissed her again adamantly.

"More of this," she panted in a brief respite, before pressing in again. Eír felt like she was drowning, hobbled from even beginning to compartmentalize the overwhelming feelings she had no name for. She was running on pure instinct, and unable to think of how to control the flood she simply allowed it to carry her.

Shrive had almost as tight a grip on Eír as the younger asari had on her, so when she suddenly hooked her foot around and firmly swept Eír's feet out from under her, the girl didn't slam to the ground but was rather lowered down to her own bedroll, Shrive looming over her.

When lips parted again, Eír let out a half-whining growl of frustration, brows knitting as she glared petulantly at Shrive.

"Do you want to be lost?" Shrive murmured. Reclined against Eír's bedroll their bodies were once again flush. Sliding a hand beneath her companion, beneath her tunic, Shrive's fingertips suddenly lit fire along Eír's lower back. She gasped with the unexpected force, and Shrive lifted her brows, apparently still waiting for an answer. "Well?"

"I-I don't…know what that means…" Eír panted, then gasped again. Shrive's lips lowered to the other asari's neck, leaving their own little trails of heat. Lavender eyes rolled back with a shiver.

"Do you want to be lost with me?" Shrive whispered again. "Join with me?"

"Yes," Eír replied, though she had little clue of what Shrive meant. Joining…that was something she half-recalled from the tank. Something about pair-bonding and nervous systems…she couldn't really recall. Biologically, instinctually, her body was all for it, every molecule urging her on with gusto.

Shrive lifted her head again, looking at Eír's eyes with a bemused smile. "You really have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No," Eír admitted, then shook her head, speaking urgently. "But it doesn't matter! If it's with you-"

"Not five minutes ago you were intent on killing me," Shrive replied. "Now you want to do anything I wish?"

"It is only fair," Eír retorted. Shrive had her body pinned, but that did not stop the younger girl from lifting her head a bit, her expression vehement. "I defeated you," she pointed out angrily. "Now _you_ defeat _me_!"

Shrive laughed. "What an interesting way to see it," she said, then lowered her lips to within a hairsbreadth of Eír's.

"Death or love, Eír," Shrive whispered. "You must choose. You can love a thing, and hate a thing, but in doing both you only destroy yourself."

"More lessons?" Eír asked softly. That heat was rising again, in body and in soul. The fire nearby felt uncomfortably hot, and she wanted things she had no name for. She didn't care if it was pain or pleasure, so long as Shrive was the one inflicting it.

"Everything is a lesson," Shrive whispered again. Her breath ruffled over Eír's lips. "You must choose."

Eír answered by lifting her head slightly, closing that slight distance and hungrily kissing Shrive once more. Lost in its molten heat, an odd desire began to rise. She found herself thinking about Shrive's eyes. They were a dark blue, tinged with the tiniest violet and gold flecks. In her mind's eye she could recall every shade of them, every line and reflection. She suddenly, most desperately, wanted to see them.

She opened her own eyes, and as she did she felt a warmth pass through them, a rushing heat that seemed to forge a path into her mind. Shrive moved back just enough, and when she opened her own eyes they were no longer blue, but had gone a depthless black.

When their gazes met, Eír felt swallowed down…out of the cave, out of Tuchanka, out of time and the universe itself. Shrive was suddenly no longer simply laying against her. Now she was everywhere, in every color and smell, every texture and sensation. Eír could see her in front of her and yet feel her moving within her chest, within her mind, at the same time. Eír was more than Eír, Shrive more than Shrive, both together something more magnificent, more powerful, and yet somehow a part of everything else as well.

Eír was the air breathed. She was the crackle of the fire-pit. She was the smell of the roasting varren. She was the varren.

She was eternity. She was joy.

She was lost.

Clothing was easily discarded, both women dressed fairly light for the Tuchankan heat, there being no need for protective wraps in the cave and away from the sun. Hearts beat as one, breath moved as one, minds folded about each other as did bodies until they were inseparable, indistinguishable.

Though such a joining _could_ be done fully clothed and in public, with no other contact than a held hand and a met gaze -all the true joining experience simply shared within the mind and the nervous system anyway- it was extremely rare for any couple to bond in such a dry, clinical manner. Minds occupied, bodies followed eons old instincts and once left to their own devices followed the basest dictates of the oldest course of nature.

Everything within her seemed to be striving for something, each sensation only growing stronger, building on itself and the others until the tiny part of her that still identified itself as Eír thought it would be incinerated and utterly destroyed, consumed in this most wonderful of deaths.

At the end, everything was overwhelmed, and she could do nothing but cry out, these last moments of life worth every single moment that had gone before.

Only, she didn't die.

Slowly she became aware of reality again, the cave camp settling in, solidifying. Heat was replaced with cool comfort, draping over her in a unseen weighty blanket, bringing with it weary exhaustion. She could hear her own breath now, feel the slowing thunder of her heart, the faint trembling of her muscles. She was Eír again, and only Eír, something moving away from her spirit. She felt the momentary bitter taste of loneliness, and a tear traced down her temple.

They were no longer one. They were now once again just Shrive and Eír, two girls laying in a cave camp, tangled up with the bed-roll and each other. Desperate to ease that loneliness, to feel some thin hint of the connection just so recently severed, Eír pulled the other girl close, burying her face into her neck, trying to move into her skin. She had to settle for the feeling of Shrive's pulse against her cheek, a steady rhythm now apart from her own.

"That is joining?" she asked after a long moment of silence.

"Yes," Shrive murmured back.

"Why did it have to end?" Eír lamented sadly.

"All things end in time, and all things are reborn," Shrive told her, gently stroking her arm.

Eír's slim eyebrows drew together, before she lifted her head a little and looked at Shrive's face, memorizing every hue and plane of it. "Mother wants me to kill you," she confessed softly, as if saying the words too loudly would cause Shrive's life to immediately vanish, her body to fall dead.

If startled or alarmed by this revelation, the older girl made no reaction save to look at Eír's eyes. "Do _you_ want to kill me?" she asked.

"_No_," Eír said with a vehemence that started even her. Shrive laughed faintly.

"Then don't," she said. "You must live your life for your own sake, Eír. I know she has done much for you, but you are not hers to command…this is not her life to dictate. It is yours alone, and only you can choose the road you walk."

"I don't care what road I take," Eír told her. "I want to be with _you_."

Shrive smiled again, a little more sadly, then lifted a hand and almost idly traced her fingers over Eír's crest a moment, before her touch dropped away again. "This is going to upset mother," she lamented softly, more to herself than to Eír.

Eír blinked. "Does…Misira want you to kill _me_?" she asked. Shrive lifted her brows.

"What? No, of course not, but… Eír, we are _both_ asari. This…relationship…she will not like it. She will insist I put my sights elsewhere-"

"You are not hers to command," Eír pointed out. "Nor is this _her_ life to dictate."

Shrive laughed, then shook her head. "Using my own wisdom against me. Dirty blow, sweet one."

Eír smirked. "In battle I use all my cunning, all tools at my command," she reminded Shrive. "I had a good teacher."

Shrive pulled her down close again, Eír once more snuggling in against the older girl's neck as Shrive stroked her shoulder, and then kissed her forehead. "Sleep now. No more thinking for a while. Find peace…and sleep."

Eír closed her eyes, letting her mind drift as she listened to her love's heartbeat. Sleep, yes, but peace…no. Eír had no need to find peace.

For the first time in her life, she had already found it.

* * *

><p>The golden and pink evening air was tinged with the mingled scent of lilac and saffron, the purple flowers forming thick ranks in carefully tended planters around the marble drive and walkway. As the chauffer lent his hand, Shepard forced herself to take it, stepping out of the limo.<p>

The air was pleasantly tepid, the glimmer of the dying sun perfectly reflected off grand windows and intricate carvings set in arcs around the doorframe. A light breeze stirred her hair around her shoulders as she looked to her left, where the statue of Saren was being unloaded from a delivery truck…right on time.

_Kasumi's right, it is lovely_, Shepard thought. Expertly formed and radiant with polished gold, she almost imagined she could see that calculating glint in its fixed eyes…the same glint Saren had possessed when he'd nearly throttled her on Virmire.

She was not the only one in the drive. Other limos were landing or hand landed, and the small smattering of men and women of a half-dozen different races could be seen, polished and pressed and resplendent in their self-made royalty.

Most were looking in curiosity at the statue as it was moved, wonder or even outright bitter jealousy on their faces.

As the statue reached flat ground, a human man in a pristine white suit approached another in a security uniform as he scanned the statue with his omni-tool. Dismissing the chauffer with a nod, Shepard headed in that direction.

_Here we go. Time to put on Gunn_. _Palm down. Just remember that…palm down._

The man in the white suit was Hock. She recognized him from the picture that Kasumi had shown her. Entering his mid-forties with class, Hock was not hard on the eyes. His short black hair had just the right, roguish touch of gray, his features classic enough to look noble and rugged enough to look down-to-earth. His dark eyes had a hint of stone, however, and even smiling his expression told of calculating chill.

As she drew near she overheard the conversation.

"Now, who is this lovely piece from?" Hock asked, his voice well-cultured and not lightly coated with Afrikaans, placing him either from South Africa, Earth, or the Richelta colony near the Traverse.

"Manifest says _Alison Gunn_," the security guard replied.

"Ah, yes…that little go-getter I've been hearing about. Well, she must have been quite successful with one endeavor or another to be giving such gifts."

"I've had a good year," Shepard smiled as she approached. When Hock looked at her, she offered her hand…palm down. "Alison Gunn, Mr. Hock. I am delighted to meet you."

One eyebrow twitched slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting a bit as he inclined his head, then reached out and took her hand. He lifted it to his lips, allowing only the briefest touch before lowering it again.

"Ms. Gunn, I must say…you are not how I pictured you. It is so refreshing to see a real lady in a roll more often than not filled with over-developed, steroidal grunts."

"Well, I consider myself more a gun-savvy entrepreneur than a merc," she said.

"Gun-savvy entrepreneur, I like that," he smiled, then gestured at the statue. "This is quite a token, Ms. Gunn. I am honored."

"Less than half of what would truly be fitting to present to the great Donovan Hock," she lamented. "Still, I must make do where I can."

"Sir, I'm not getting any readings," the security man interrupted with a grump, frowning at Shepard. Hock looked at him.

"So you've scanned the statue?" he asked. The man blinked at him.

"Yes, sir. Twice sir. You just saw me-"

"You scanned the statue twice and found _no_ nasty surprises?"

"Yes, sir. None sir."

"Then I think, Mr. Trefen, that the statue is safe to move to the vault…don't you?"

"Uh, yes, sir. Right away sir," Trefen replied, and waved at the movers to proceed. Hock looked back at Shepard.

"Sorry about that. Trefen is so used to finding a problem he hardly knows what to do with himself when there isn't one."

"It's quite all right, Mr. Hock," Shepard replied. Hock smiled again, eyes glittering.

"Please, call me Donovan," he said, and then bowed ever so slightly, indicating the house. "Do me the honor of entering my home, Ms. Gunn. I have other guests I must greet…none nearly as interesting, I assure you…but I will see you again before the night is through, I'm sure. Until then, my home is your home…within reason, of course."

"Of course," she replied, before gracing him with a smile and turning to join those heading inside.

_{Hey, not bad, Shep…you're kind of good at this,}_ Kasumi's whisper filled her ear via bud.

"I'm good at survival," Shepard murmured back. "That's all this is…just survival in nice shoes. Literally."

_{Once we're inside, pretend to mingle a bit. Get a drink if you want. Keep your eyes open for any trace of a way down into the basement…that's where the vault will most likely be. I'll scope around myself on the fringes, see what our next move is.}_

Shepard only nodded in response, too close to other people now to risk actually speaking.

The inside of the house was every inch as grand as the outside. The huge ball room was resplendent with light, color, and tasteful beauty. A fountain filled with Japanese koi provided a shimmering oasis in the glittering sea of self-important criminal elite, and Shepard paused there momentarily, looking around.

A four-piece string quartet provided gentle music, a dozen men and women in matching jackets weaving through the crowd with trays of hors d'oeuvres and glasses of wine and champagne. Elegant staircases lead upward, and there were cozy alcoves where guests could sit and talk while enjoying the scenery. The far wall from the front door opened into a garden balcony which had a splendid view of the colony.

The soldier in Shepard, however, was noting all doorways and escape access points…any possible location she could expect to come across ambush. She was counting the men and women in security uniform, noting not only location but build, height, mannerisms, and any moment of distraction.

On the surface this was a party like any other high-society party, but to Shepard it was just another kind of battlefield. Once she had felt out the terrain, once she knew her strategies, she would be set.

Satisfied with her initial visual reconnaissance, Shepard seated herself on a bench overlooking the pond, turning her gaze to the fish and letting her hair drape slightly to hide her mouth. Lifting a hand, she pretended to fiddle with her earring while activating the ear bud.

"There are seven exits from this room," Shepard murmured softly. "Most go up, a few are level, but there is a staircase in the far corner of the north-eastern lounge area. It's hard to see and it is half-obscured by a hanging tapestry curtain and roped off with velvet."

_{Yes, I see it. It goes downward, Shep. Sit tight. I'm going to go down and see if that's our way to the vault.}_

As Shepard straightened and looked toward the party again, a servant stopped, lowering his tray with a smile in her direction. "Champagne?" he offered.

She offered what she hoped was a stunning smile, and took a glass from the tray. As he continued on his way she rose and wandered over toward the musicians, only sipping at the cup. Anything could happen and while she had to maintain her cover, getting drunk on the party champagne was _not_ a good idea.

Enjoying the music for a moment, it was not long before Kasumi's voice returned.

_{I found it Shep. Where's Hock?}_

Glancing casually around, she spotted the man in the distance. "Other side of the party," she murmured. "He's talking with a pair of asari near the bar."

_{Good, keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't come down here. It'll take me just a minute to get a handle on the vault's security measures.}_

"Mhmm," Shepard agreed, doing her best to watch the man while pretending like she wasn't. Fortunately, Hock seemed to have no inclination toward that particular stairway, more than enjoying his conversations with an ever changing group of admirers and kiss-asses.

_He reminds me of Udina…twenty years younger and far more charming but every inch the same politician._

_{You clear?}_

"Mmhmm," Shepard agreed softly, tucking her free arm under her elbow, holding her champagne to her lips as she focused on the violin concerto.

_{There's three layers of security. A barrier, DNA scan and a voice print ID unit, complete with password. I've already taken care of the barrier, and the cameras but the scanners are going to be…tricky.}_

"How tricky?" Shepard murmured.

_{Don't worry Shep, this is me you're talking to. Keiji could crack this system in his sleep and I'm better_. _But it_ will _need some finesse…and most of it will be up to you. I'm coming back upstairs. I'll tap you on the elbow when I get back to you. When I do, I need you to get close to Hock. Get him talking. If I can record enough of his voice I can match the voice print ID. Then I'll find the password…someone's written it down somewhere. Systems like these, hired security forces of this number, password that changes daily, some meat-brain _always_ writes it down. Then we can work on DNA.}_

"K," Shepard agreed, looking around to find fix Hock's location again. Getting him talking shouldn't be a problem. The man seemed to be in love with his own voice…or so it seemed with how he was carrying on with some of his guests.

Taking another sip of her champagne, it wasn't long before she felt a light brush on her elbow, a soft but unmistakable squeeze. Without pause Shepard turned and walked over to where Hock was standing, laughing with an older gentleman.

"Mr. Hock," she greeted with a radiant smile as he looked toward her. "I must say, this house is absolutely beautiful. You have exquisite taste."

"Thank you, Ms. Gunn," he smiled, then gestured at his companion. "Ms. Gunn, this is my old friend Finn Janu."

"Delighted, madam," the older man smiled charmingly, reaching out his hand to give hers a gentle squeeze.

"Finn Janu," she said, impressed. "It seems I am destined to bask in the light of those more worthy tonight."

_Fucking goddamn two bit red sand drug lord, were this any other place and time I'd shove that charming smile up your goddamn fucking ass_.

The mental image only made her smile the warmer as the two men laughed. "We all started small, Ms. Gunn," he said humbly.

"Please, call me Alison. Both of you."

"And I insisted you call me Donovan, remember?" Hock said, lightly touching her shoulder. As Shepard glanced at him, Janu gave a knowing smile and lightly cleared his throat.

"Well, Donovan, I do see Erry Lawe is here. I should have a word. If you'll excuse me. Alison, it was a delight to meet you."

_Next time you meet me I'll wipe your face off with a shotgun round_.

"The pleasure was all mine," she answered. As he walked away, she looked back at Hock. Eyes glimmering, the man smiled and gently plucked her champagne from her hand, setting it on a passing tray before he bowed slightly.

"If you'll do me the honor of a dance, Alison?"

She lifted a brow, giving him a coy smile. "Donovan, are you flirting with me?"

"Perhaps a little," he replied. "I am a powerful and rich man but I am still a man, and I like the company of charming ladies such as yourself. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you for at least one dance, especially after you gifted me with such a beautiful tribute."

"And I would be remiss if I didn't take advantage of the chance to dance with Donovan Hock," she replied, and offered her hand. He took it, lightly pecking another kiss over her knuckles before leading her over closer to the musicians. He pulled her close.

"You know," he said after a moment. "You really _aren't_ what I expected."

"The merc thing again," she smiled. "Let me guess. Beyond being all blunt and pumped up with steroids, you expected that I would be a swearing, crass, chain-smoking alcoholic somewhat resembling a gorilla shoved into a sparkly dress."

He laughed. "Something like that. I suppose stereotypes don't do anyone any good, do they?"

"I've found that people are rarely what we first want to believe they are. Someone you can't stand upon first meeting could grow into your very best friend…or a friend into your worst nightmare."

"Says someone who has been burned before, I suspect," he prodded gently.

"We all take risks in our line of work, Donovan. And not all of us grow to be as great as you."

He ducked closer a little, that charming grin soft and seductive. "Keep flattering, Alison," he murmured. "It will get you everywhere."

She giggled, shaking her head a little.

_Oh, God, I actually fucking _giggled_! Someone shoot me, right now. Please and thank you._

Keeping the smile plastered on her face she withdrew her hands from his and draped them over his shoulders, stepping a little closer as his arms moved around her waist. "So," she said. "Tell me a secret. Doesn't have to be anything important…just some small part of Donovan Hock that no one else knows."

"Well, let me see…" he looked thoughtful a moment, before smiling a little. "I don't suppose it would break your first impressions of _me_ if I told you I loved gardening, would it?"

"Gardening? Really…I'd never have pegged you for the type."

"It's true. As a boy my father was a small colony gardener. He helped with the hydroponics gardens and even some of the landscaping. He especially loved flowers. I grew up surrounded by beautiful flowers of every kind. Even now the scent of jasmine from Earth reminds me of him."

"How does one go from a colony gardener's son to an elite businessman such as yourself?"

"Ambition," he answered honestly. "Dreams, hopes, aspiring to something greater than my beginnings, something grander than the sum of my small parts. There's an entire galaxy out there, filled with things we can't even imagine, all waiting to be experienced. Being a gardener's son was fine, but I wanted more out of life…and I had the drive and the intelligence to pursue it. I also learned I had a knack for dealing with people, for…persuasion, if you will. For example…"

He leaned in even closer, only an inch separating the two. When she made no move to withdraw or protest, he kissed her.

It lingered only a moment, and as he drew back he murmured, "Do you think I could _persuade_ you to come with me somewhere else, to talk a bit more…privately?"

"Why, Mr. Hock," she replied, with a slight smile. "What kind of merc do you think I am?"

"I hope I can find out," he teased. Drawing back he offered his hand again. When she took it he turned and led her across the floor toward one of the upward staircases.

Shepard followed obediently. Internally, however, she was rinsing her mouth out with battery acid and scrubbing her lips with sandpaper.

_I won't stop puking for a goddamn month if he does that again_, she snarled within. Then she mentally shook her head. _We need that voice sample. I don't know if Kasumi has enough yet, and besides that, we need a DNA sample. Getting him alone is the best way to accomplish both._

Upstairs it was much quieter, the sounds of the party barely filtering upward. He led her down a short hallway and then punched a security code into a door. "These are my own personal quarters," he told her as the door parted. "Please, make yourself at home."

The room was lavish, naturally. Displays of ancient weaponry and sculpture lined the walls, the furnishings within elegantly appointed. It was almost like a luxury apartment of its own, nestled within the grander building.

As she looked around he went over to his private service. "Would you like another drink?"

"Yes, thank you," she smiled. "But are you sure your other guests won't feel neglected?"

"My staff will ensure they don't," he told her. "Besides, they'll hardly notice I'm gone. Most of them are here for the food anyway."

He grinned at her, then uncapped a crystal decanter. "Brandy ok?"

"Yes, please," she agreed. "Do you mind if I take my shoes off? I swear heels were made to slowly break a woman's back."

"Go right ahead," he said. As she stepped out of the heels Shepard couldn't help a faint sigh of relief. Turning toward him she smiled again as he passed her the glass of brandy.

"Thank you."

"Please, have a seat."

The long sofa was in a small sunken area of the main living space. Shepard had to admit it was comfortable, but looking around all she could see were things bought with blood money, purchased off the sweat and suffering of others. However charming he tried to be, down beneath Hock was nothing but a self-centered, greedy fucking bastard.

As she took a sip of the brandy, he sat beside her. "I really don't mean to seem as if I'm too forward," he told her. "It's not really that. I mean, don't get me wrong. You are a beautiful woman, as I'm sure you've heard many times. But my goal is not to seduce you."

He rubbed his hand over his lips, then chuckled faintly. "Well, it is, but not like that. _Entirely_. I do want to seduce you but…with a business arrangement."

She looked at him as if he were a charmingly misbehaving child. "And what would Donovan Hock need with a simple mercenary like me?"

"Well, for one thing, I like to keep my eye open for talent. I pride myself on sniffing out new blood with that special something that will only bring strength to my own organization. And for another thing…"

This smile was a bit more secretive, his dark eyes glimmering as he met hers. "…I don't believe you're a mercenary."

Shepard felt the tiniest internal flinch at this, but forced herself to keep his gaze, to do nothing to give herself away. Just like poker, it never paid to reveal your hand, even if your opponent was certain he knew what your cards were.

"Don't you?" she teased lightly. "Because I don't act like a thug?"

"You're too feminine," he said. Taking her brandy he set it aside, then picked up one hand, gently stroking it between his own. "These hands…they're soft, uncalloused really…like a newborn. You have a…bright, shiny newness about you, not worn down like mercs tend to be."

Spreading her fingers over his palm he brushed his thumb over her knuckles. "I'll bet you've never even thrown a punch before. These knuckles have never cracked a man's jaw, have they?"

Shepard sat forward slightly, a devious look on her face. "You think I'm a soft, breakable little girl, don't you?"

"Oh, I don't know that I'd call you a little girl," he smiled. "But mercenary? Never."

In a flash, Shepard's hand closed on his wrist and pulled. Yanked off balance, he started to spill forward. Instantly wrenching his arm around, pressing the heel of her other hand to the back of his neck she pinned him awkwardly over his own lap, his arm craned so his hand was nearly between his shoulders.

She let him feel the pressure and pain in his elbow and shoulder for a just a moment, then released him. "Perhaps I'm not as helpless and delicate as you seem to think," she murmured.

Clearing his throat, he resettled his suit jacket, obviously irritated with himself that he'd let his guard down so easily. "Yes, well…so it would seem," he admitted.

Then his own hand snatched out, grabbing her wrist firmly. Reflexively she grabbed his wrist right back, body tensing to pitch the ass right off the sofa before beating some goddamn sense into him. Fortunately, her _own_ sense overrode her instant reaction and she prevented doing something she would most assuredly have regretted very soon. Instead the pair glared into each other's eyes before Hock pressed forward and kissed her again.

This time it was no mere, half-chaste pressing of lips. It was hungry and demanding, and Shepard couldn't help a disgusted wince when his tongue pressed into her mouth. Fortunately, from his vantage, he could not see it, and she forced herself to respond.

Then suddenly Hock recoiled with a baffled yelp. "Ow! You bit me!"

He lifted a hand to his lower lip, which was dripping blood.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she gushed, leaning past him to snatch a couple of tissues off the nearby table. Lightly she took hold of his chin, mopping up the crimson. She gave a sheepish smile. "I must have gotten carried away."

Sweeping away the last of the blood she wadded up the tissue and shifted it behind her back, even as she leaned in and softly kissed his lower lip. "There," she murmured. "All better."

As he took advantage of her closeness to capture her lips again, as she knew he would, she opened her hand behind her back, holding the bloody tissue on her palm. A breath and she felt it taken away as Kasumi claimed it.

_DNA sample, check_.


	21. Chapter 21

A/N: I put my nod to _Kill Bill_ in here. I frickin' love that movie, by the way. I actually started a fanfic of that too, way back in the day. If I ever get it finished and polished up, I may even put it up here. Who knows?

* * *

><p>The DNA sample secure, Shepard immediately turned her mind to exit strategy. Kasumi had to have enough now for her voice-print, and all Shepard wanted to do was get out of this lip-lock, off this sofa and out of this fucking room. Snapping his neck was looking very much like a viable option when she heard an ominous and unmistakable click.<p>

She drew back every so slowly at the feel of metal against her temple, her eyes first landing on Hock's face. The man looked smug, smiling faintly. From there her gaze shifted toward the pistol in his hand.

It must have been hidden in the crease of the sofa. Now, it was planted quite firmly to her temple, his finger on the trigger. She could only just see part of the weapon but it looked like a Harvestman .2. They had goddamn hair triggers. If he so much as twitched her brains would be gone.

As such, she didn't dare make any sudden movements. No matter what she did he would have her down before the motion even halfway began.

"What's this?" she asked, feigning wary confusion.

"It's a _gun_, Ms. Goto," Hock replied. "I'm sure a 'merc' like you is quite familiar with them."

"I don't understand," Shepard said slowly. "Goto…I think you have me confused with someone else-"

"Do I?" he asked amiably. "Let's consider the facts, shall we? I know you've been itching to figure a way into my vault, ever since your partner met a rather sticky end. I also knew that throwing a party like this one would be bait that you'd not be able to resist. I'm not a fool, Ms. Goto. This party was very specifically arranged. Everyone I invited, every person in the building down to the last hired waiter, is someone I've met in person before. I was very careful _not_ to invite someone if I'd never worked directly with them, shaken their hand. I knew that should a stranger show up, it would be you. And sure enough, here you are."

"Hock, listen to me," Shepard said carefully. "I am not this…Goto. First off, that's a Japanese name…do I look Japanese to you?"

"No," he replied. "And how many other aliases have you used in the past? How many other misleading names to keep the authorities and…people like me…from tracking you down after our most valuable of valuables disappear? Besides, I once knew a Japanese man named Robert Carlisle…names mean nothing. Surely you knew I would see in a heart-beat that you were no merc. Soft hands like that, they're more suited for lifting other people's property, don't you think?"

Keeping the gun to her head he reached into his pocket, came out with a tiny device. She knew what it was. Black-market tech based on Alliance Department of Justice devices. It was a miniature truth-scan. Aimed at her eyes, it would measure the tiniest fluctuations in her capillary and pupilary dilation, register the tiniest nuanced changes of respiration. Unless the subject was extremely well trained there was no way to lie to the scanner, and even then it was hit or miss at best.

As he'd reached into his pocket, he'd shifted the gun off her temple. It never left her skin, never gave her an opening, but it moved enough that she caught a better look at it. It was definitely a Harvestman .2. Besides having the hair trigger the concussive force would be enough to not only evacuate her grey matter completely but remove most of her skull. At this close of a range, there was not the slimmest hope of surviving.

Then she saw something else, and fought not to smile. The side of the gun she could see included the safety. As Hock was powering up his little truth-scan, the switch ever so slowly edged over into the 'on' position.

_Thank you, Kasumi._

"You know what this is?" Hock said, holding the small device up in front of her face.

"Of course."

"So, I'm going to ask you a question, and after you answer, this thing is going to tell me you're lying, and then I'm going to shoot you."

"And if I'm not lying?"

"Then we will have to discuss who you _really_ are and why you are at my party when I've never before shaken your hand…and in the end, I may just shoot you anyway."

"Comforting," she mumbled. He smiled, aiming the device at her eyes.

"Are you Kasumi Goto?" he asked.

"No," she replied evenly.

_{Truth. Truth_,_}_ the little device declared in an obnoxious, almost gnomish little voice. Hock blinked, genuinely startled.

"You're really _not_ Kasumi Goto?" he asked, as he lowered the device, staring at her.

"No," Shepard said with a grin. Her fist lashed up, cracking into his jaw. He reeled back, tumbling straight off the end of the armless sofa and crashing to the floor. Rising she grinned at him, eyes flashing in eager deadliness. "I'm Commander _fucking_ Shepard."

When the hit had connected she'd heard the impotent click of the pistol as he'd reflexively pulled the trigger. Though taken by surprise and doubtlessly still trying to clear stars from his eyes, Hock was not stupid. He still had a hold of the pistol, and was reaching for the safety as Shepard got to her feet and stalked over. Suddenly, the weapon ripped out of his grip and sailed away.

"What?" he gaped, then stared at the small thief that shimmered into view.

"_I'm_ Kasumi Goto," she announced, and kicked him in the head.

As he reeled, Shepard was on him. Crouching she shoved him over onto his stomach, and as he lifted his head to try and struggle her off, she palmed the back of his skull and bounced his face against the hard floor. Instantly he slumped, unconscious.

Turning, Shepard yanked the decorative cloth off the coffee table and tore it down the middle, hauling his arms back and binding them together.

"Thanks for putting that safety on," Shepard said as she worked. "You ok?"

"I'm fine," Kasumi said. "_I_ didn't have to kiss the bastard."

"Yeah, you _are_ going to be spending the next thirty years making _that_ one up to me," Shepard grumbled. Snatching hold of the man's legs she hauled his ankles up, binding them with a length of cloth directly to his wrists, cinching both tight enough he'd likely lose circulation.

"He's going to be out for a while but we need to move quick," Shepard said, getting to her feet and snatching up her discarded shoes. "You have what you need for the vault?"

"Everything but the password," Kasumi confirmed.

"I'll get back down to the party," Shepard told her. "Go. Look fast. If fortune favors us we'll be in and on our way back to the _Normandy_ by the time handsome here opens his eyes again."

Kasumi nodded, striding toward the door. A breath before she shimmered back into invisibility she looked back, eyes fixed on Hock's limp form. The hatred in them was palpable.

After she'd vanished, Shepard thumped the back of the limp man's head. "You're lucky," she growled at him. "I don't kill unconscious, unarmed men, and unlike you, Kasumi is no murderer. Be thankful we spared your life. The _next_ time you hold a gun on me, you won't _be_ so fortunate."

Hooking him by the truss, she dragged him out of the sunken living room and into the bedroom, dropping him down on the floor again, out of sight of the door should anyone enter. Returning to the living room she quickly straightened everything up, cleaning the small spot of blood he'd left on the ground, leaving no trace that anything untoward had happened.

Snatching up her shoes, she trotted to the door and out into the corridor, only slowing as she reached the stairs. Hopping from one foot to the other she slipped her shoes back on, then forced herself to walk calmly and sedately down the steps and back into the oblivious party.

_{I have the password, Shep,}_ Kasumi breathed hastily into her ear, only moments later. _{Meet me down at the vault.}_

Thank God, this was all almost over. Unlike Kasumi, she could not turn invisible, but even so it only took Shepard a moment to sleep unseen into the small stairwell. Once she was out of sight of any prying eyes, she immediately took off her shoes again and padded swiftly down the steps barefoot.

The vault had a small anteroom before the actual door. It was here that the statue of Saren had been delivered, along with several other tributes, waiting for the end of the party when Hock would be able to direct their movement inside.

Kasumi, visible as she had already taken care of the security cameras, was working at the console. As Shepard stepped in, she half turned. "I should have killed that bastard, Shep."

"You're not a murderer, Kasumi," Shepard replied gently. The thief nodded faintly, then turned back to her work.

"This is going to take me just a moment. Might as well get dressed."

Shepard grinned. "I have been waiting _all goddamn night_ for you to say that."

Tossing her heels aside, Shepard went to the statue and touched a corner of the marble base. The DNA thumbprint scan hidden there accepted her ident, and the drawer slid open.

"_There's_ my babies," Shepard murmured as her armor and weapons came into view. "Mama missed you."

Not bothering with the fastens, Shepard straightened and merely gripped the side of her dress with both hands, tearing it down from collar to hem. Kasumi didn't look around but she knew what that sound meant.

"Hey, that cost a _lot_ you know," she teased.

"So will the vaccinations I need because I kissed that fucker," Shepard snorted back, casting the torn garment aside. Reaching into the drawer she pulled out a short body suit and pulled it on, then grabbed her armor. "Did I tell you about the time a Thorian thrall vomited right in my mouth? Yeah. I'd much rather have done _that_ again."

Hard-suit on, proper heavy boots fastened, weapons-pack locked into place and ready to go, Shepard tugged the comb out of her hair and slipped it into a pouch, along with the necklace and diamond earrings. Those really _were_ expensive, and she had no doubt Kasumi wanted them back.

Fastening the pouch to her belt she drew her hair back, tying it up as she looked over at the thief. "We about ready?"

"All that's needed is the password," Kasumi said, aiming her omni-tool at the mike a breath before Hock's voice spoke.

"_Perugia_."

"Bingo," Kasumi grinned as the door's holographic interface went from lockdown red to accessible green.

"Good, let's get in and get out."

The women headed into the vault, Shepard drawing her pistol as they did, just in case Hock had mechs or something just as nasty guarding the place from the inside.

A short corridor led through another door, down a long and winding set of stairs, then through an archway into the vault proper. Shepard couldn't help the low whistle as they passed within. Her first look at Hock's vault was not at all what she had been expecting.

The room was huge, nearly the size of the house they had just left. Less like entering a vault and more like stepping into a museum, each piece seemed to have its own display, each gigantic statue or sculpture its own plinth. Shepard was no art connoisseur, but even she could spot works from every culture, including asari, krogan, hanar, drell, and human.

Hers was not the only awe as they moved carefully into the stadium-sized space. Kasumi's eyes were alight with an entire galaxy of stars.

"Shepard, this is…I cannot _believe_ what I'm seeing," she whispered. "This…this painting, this is the original asari work _Se Vitataska_…it is a _thousand_ years old, and has been lost for six centuries. How did _Hock_ manage to get hold of it? And this sculpture, its krogan…"

"So?" Shepard asked, peering up at the ugly thing.

"Since when have you ever heard of a _krogan_ artist?" Kasumi challenged with a smile. "Come on. Lovely as all this is we need to focus. Keiji's greybox has to be here somewhere."

"It's going to take hours to look for it in here," Shepard said.

"No, here. Tune your omni-tool to this frequency…" Kasumi instructed, displaying her own. "The box transmits a faint electromagnetic signature. Keep the tool lit, and if you pass within five meters of that signature it will alert you."

"Good, you take the left side of the room, I'll take the-"

Shepard broke off, her eyes going wide as the two women entered the main aisle and caught sight of what was dominating the far end. This particular artifact she needed no help to identify. "That's…that's not possible…"

Kasumi gasped as well. "How did…how did Hock get _Lady Liberty's head_?"

The original Statue of Liberty, which sat for many centuries at the entrance to the harbor in New York, had been destroyed in a massive earthquake and tsunami that had struck four years before Shepard's birth. Most of the classic Manhattan coastline had to be rebuilt, and most of the statue itself, salvaged from the frigid waters of the Atlantic where it had been swept, was irreparable. What pieces were saved…the torch, part of the lower torso and base…were on display at the Smithsonian. A new statue had been commissioned and placed in Liberty's old spot. The head, however, had never been located…at least not by honest men, apparently.

Now it stood, dominating the far end of the vault, regarding the two intruding women with the same soulful, implacable expression Liberty had worn since she was first forged. Her crown was damaged and eroded some, cracks lining her discolored face, but other than that she was remarkably intact.

"We can't leave her here, Shep," Kasumi said.

"She won't fit on the _Normandy_," Shepard pointed out. "We'll send her location data to Anderson and the Alliance. They probably won't risk an attempt at a retrieval but it's the best we can do. C'mon, we really have to move."

Splitting up the pair began to work their way through the room, going as quickly as they dared, listening for any tell-tale beep that would signify the greybox's location.

As she neared the end of her section, some tense minutes later, the beep finally sounded from Shepard's omni-tool.

"Kasumi," she called. "I found it. Over here."

The thief appeared a few moments later, just as Shepard narrowed in on a small case.

"The greybox has to be inside," she said as she powered down her omni-tool and looked over at her companion. Then she blinked.

"Wait, where'd the swords come from?"

Kasumi had a pair of katana strapped to her back that were most certainly not there just a few minutes ago. The woman's expression was stern as she met Shepard's gaze.

"These are Hattori Hānzo swords, Shepard. Probably the last two in existence in the entire galaxy. I may not be able to rescue Lady Liberty but _these_ most certainly are not getting touched by that bastard's hands again."

Shepard shrugged. She had no idea who Hattori Hānzo was but so long as the swords didn't hinder them, she had no argument. She gestured at the case. "It's signaling his greybox is in here."

Moving over, Kasumi unbuckled the case and opened it. Within was a computer interface. She scanned it, then nodded. "This is it. The chip itself is no larger than a grain of rice. He's managed to integrate it into the interface. He's obviously been trying to crack it. Looks like he's been unsuccessful."

Plucking the interface from the case her fingers lightly stroked over it a moment, before she secreted it away. "All right. Let's get out of here."

"We can't go back out through the party," Shepard said as they strode for the main aisle. "We-"

Alarms. Just the sound the pair didn't want to hear. The second sound they didn't want to hear, the heavy latching of blast-proof security doors dropping down, followed a moment later.

"Fuck!" Shepard spat as the vault darkened, a face appearing hovering overhead.

Hock looked a bit the worse for wear. His eyes and nose were swollen and bruised, and his glare was pure fury.

"Ms. Goto, I would commend you but I'm a bit too put out for even that," he announced. "I have a full security detail on their way to put an end to your irritating little endeavor and to cut that greybox out of your pretty little head. As for your _friend_…"

His virtual gaze shifted to Shepard, filled with venom. "You may have looked stunning in that dress, whoever you are, but one thing is for certain. When I am done, you will _not_ be leaving behind a pretty corpse."

"Good luck with that," Shepard glared. "Oh, and you're a _shitty_ kisser."

He scowled, then vanished as they heard another door open, thundering boot-steps rushing their way. Shepard drew out her assault rifle and ratcheted a thermal clip into place, a feral grin appearing.

"Good. I've been wanting to kill something _all night_."

* * *

><p>Darkness had fallen upon the colony but the brilliant light of the moons, combined with the spot-lights on the cliff-side, winked off the hovering gun-ship with almost icy delight. Shepard, out of breath, watched from beneath as Kasumi launched into the air, sailing overhead as if she were born with wings. When she landed on the gun-ship's windscreen, Hock reacted in surprise, making the vehicle duck back a little, its nose dipping toward the ground. A breath later and the entire vehicle seemed to flash in a wash of energy as Kasumi disabled its shields.<p>

Leaping from the gunship's nose, she sailed backward in a lazily graceful flip, then landed in a crouch almost directly at Shepard's feet.

"Oh, you're _so_ teaching me _that_," Shepard stated, suitably impressed. She lifted the salvaged rocket-launcher one of the guards had been so kind to donate to their cause up to her shoulder. Even as Hock reoriented the ship, its guns swinging toward them, she fired.

With no shields, already damaged, the gunship dissolved in a heavy belch of fire and raining metal. Kasumi straightened to her feet, watching the twisted ball of destruction plummet, taking whatever remained of Hock with it past the cliff-side and then down into the sea.

She closed her eyes only a moment, as Shepard dropped the spent launcher and wiped escaped strands of hair from her face. When the commander's comforting hand landed on her shoulder, Kasumi opened her eyes again, then turned and walked over to one of the shipping crates scattered over the flight pad, sitting down.

Shepard signaled the _Normandy_ to send the shuttle, then went over and sat down beside her. Both women regarded the stars a moment before Shepard looked at the thief.

"Good party," she smirked.

Kasumi chuckled, glancing at her. "Really? Heels, and a dress, and Hock kissing you? That's your idea of a good party?"

"Well, no," Shepard replied. "But the part where I got to shoot a lot of assholes and blow holes in some reinforced walls was kind of fun."

She grinned, and Kasumi smiled back. Leaning to the side slightly, Shepard lightly bumped her shoulder against her friend's.

"Thank you, Shepard," Kasumi said after another moment. "I couldn't have done this without you."

"Oh, I know," Shepard teased, then sobered. "You're welcome, Kasumi."

"I swear to you. I will do _everything_ I can to find Dr. T'Soni for you," Kasumi promised. "I will make all of this up to you."

"Honestly, I'm not keeping score," Shepard told her. "And I know you will. Despite your penchant for kleptomania, you're pretty ok, Goto."

"Well, despite your foul-mouth and that strange way you get _really_ excited when mercs explode, you're not so bad yourself," Kasumi laughed. Then she canted her head. "Do you really want me to teach you that? What I did?"

"Fuck _yeah_," Shepard grinned. "I was never one for martial arts. Boxing is more my speed, you know? I'm kind of blunt like that. I like to walk up and punch. But what you were doing…it was like dancing, like you were weightless. You didn't just fight, you flowed. I'd love to be able to do that."

"I'll tell you what," Kasumi said. "I will teach you how to fight like that, if you teach _me_ how to box."

Shepard lifted a brow, then offered her hand. "Fucking _done_."

Kasumi took the hand and nodded, before she reached behind her back. The two Hānzo swords she'd liberated from the vault were still there. Unstrapping one she held it in her hands. The moonlight shone off the wooden sheath, making it glimmer like polished satin. The handle was bound in black, leaving a pattern of golden diamonds, and etched in gold at the hilt was a bird with wings outspread.

"Then you will need this," she said, and passed the sword to Shepard.

"Really?" Shepard asked, taking it carefully. "You're giving me this?"

"Hānzo only forged swords for the greatest and most honorable of samurai. It was said if a Hānzo sword was ever bared in combat and held in the hand of anyone but a worthy warrior, it would shatter before allowing itself to be used. I'm _pretty_ sure you qualify as a worthy warrior."

"I'm…I don't know what to say, Kasumi. Thank you."

Kasumi inclined her head in a slight bow, smiling. "That one is especially fitting for you, I think. That bird on the hilt is a phoenix, returning to life from the fires that consumed it. A path you followed as well, most literally, and you bring your fury. You are Oni no Shepard."

"Oni no Shepard…?"

"Oni means demon, or devil. In old times it was even used to refer to monsters that came from the stars, outer space. Fitting, don't you agree? Devil Shepard. That is how I think of you. You have returned to life to fight like the devil among the stars."

"Huh," Shepard murmured, looking over the sword again for a moment. As she heard the sound of the approaching shuttle, she looked upward, watching as the vehicle lowered from the sky. "Well, right now, this devil wants a bath, a stiff drink, and a good cigar," she said.

"I hear that," Kasumi agreed.

As the shuttle landed, Shepard gestured at the other girl, indicating the computer interface containing Keiji's greybox. "You going to access that?"

"Yes," Kasumi replied. "In…maybe in a day or two, when I'm ready."

Shepard nodded in understanding, once again clapping the girl on her shoulder as they got to their feet and headed for the vehicle that would take them home.

* * *

><p>Eír's footsteps along the hall sounded empty and ominous to her ears. Here, there was not the green beauty of the athenaeum…only the harsh, hot reality of krogan architecture, grim and battered by time and fury.<p>

Fury was what she was afraid of as she approached the door to the rooms she shared with Gellian. Her resolve, which had been so firm just a few short hours ago, was crumbling into the hesitant uncertainty of a child once again.

Everything else aside, she loved Gellian. She was the only mother Eír had ever known. Even in her anger, the thought of seeing disappointment in the woman's eyes cut Eír deeply. She didn't want Gellian to be hurt, she just wanted her to…well, to _understand_.

The krogan boys had not yet returned from their hunt, though they were on their way. The varren was the largest trophy that Eír and Shrive had been able to bag. If the boys came back with anything larger or more dangerous, they would be the clear victors.

The status and prestige was not of concern to Eír of course but she prayed that Thug had done well. She knew that it was important to him, important that the other krogan saw him as strong, as worthy as any of their number.

She reached the door, pausing outside of it. Shrive had offered to accompany her but Eír had refused, insisting this was something she needed to do on her own.

Taking a deep breath, she strode into the room.

Gellian was seated at her desk, and though Eír had been gone only a few days it looked like the woman had aged years. Her blonde hair was limp, more gray than blonde. Always thin and sickly in appearance, she looked almost skeletal, her skin an unhealthy shade of yellow. Eír's determination vanished in sudden alarmed concern.

"Mother?"

Jolting a little as if out of surprise, Gellian's eyes shifted to the girl standing there, gaping at her.

"3.5 meters," she mumbled, glazed. "Eír…77 allele malformations to keratin structure-"

Her alarm now almost full panic, Eír ran forward. As she drew closer she could see the scattered vials and bottles both on the desk and littered around the floor. Grasping hold of Gellian she gasped, "How long have you been reciting?"

"The solar cycle of Ambrose lasts 2.77 Earth min… Eír. You are here?"

"I am here! _How long have you been reciting?"_

"L-last night…I think…" Gellian's eyes shifted rapidly from side to side, as if reading swiftly scrolling text. "They don't work…they're not working."

Her bony hand reached out for a vial, only to fumble and knock it off the desk. "It's a compound of thyroxizine and rebulitrol hydrocynide R2N37H…"

Eír knew what was happening. She knew that Gellian's health had been delicate the last few weeks but she had not expected this. She was on the verge of a catastrophic mental breakdown and the chemical measures she'd used her entire life to prevent it were no longer working.

"I've got you, Mother," Eír gasped, sliding her arms around the human woman and lifting her easily, cradling her close. "We'll get you help!"

As she rushed out of the room, she could feel tears heating her eyes. This was all her fault, punishment for what she'd been about to do. She had been going to tell Gellian that she was going to live her own life, make her own choices. That she was not going to kill Shrive, now or ever. That Gellian's hate-filled quest to destroy Shepard was not her own. Shepard had done horrible things, yes…but Shrive had told her she could not let her hatred dictate her heart, nor could she allow her mother's hatred to do the same.

But now this. Some unseen force, some power that held sway over the courses of the universe, must have heard or felt her defiance and was now punishing her, destroying Gellian for Eír's sins.

Moving fast, Eír had not yet gotten downstairs to the clan's small medical room when Gellian's constant soft murmurings turned more rapid, the woman spitting out meaningless information as fast as she could speak, her eyes rolling back and forth beneath their half-closed lids. Eír was sobbing as she reached the ground floor, only to spot a welcome face.

"Shrive!" she cried, and the girl turned around, gaping at her before rushing over.

"What's happened?"

"Mother…she's dying…" Eír gasped. Fearing the girl's emotional state would lead her to drop the human woman, Shrive claimed her out of Eír's arms. The pair ran the rest of the way to the medic, an asari matron named Linai. In service to the matriarch the woman had stepped in as the clan's official doctor. Larger clans could boast their own krogan medics, but they were a rarity that Dundrin had not been blessed with.

Linai directed Shrive to lay the human woman down on the bio-bed and swiftly turned on the scans. Instantly a three dimensional representation of the woman's brain appeared over the holographic pad.

There was no familiar shape or contour to it. Gellian had been born with a severely deformed organ to begin with, and the image that hovered there now would only have been recognizable to trained human doctors as a human brain. Shaped almost like an ovoid donut, the weird tangles of gray matter all but hovered over the normally shaped cerebellum and medulla oblongata.

Every inch of it was aglow with a riot of bright reds, oranges, yellows and whites, each color made up of a million different tiny dots all flashing madly out of sync.

Gellian was rambling so fast her words were nearly incomprehensible, her breath wheezing and driving out sounds on inhales as well as exhales.

Linai's expression was grim, her brows knit as she regarded the scan. "She's in a full mental cascade seizure," she murmured, then looked at Shrive. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. Her brain is in rapid overload. There is no way to stop it."

"No!" Eír screamed furiously, tearing away from Shrive's restraining hand and going to Gellian's side. As she bent over the woman, hands pressing to her thin cheeks, the scan flashed to alarmed static, unable to differentiate the information overload a second presence caused.

"Mother, _please_…" she sobbed. "Please…I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm such a horrible daughter. I'm sorry I left you, please…_please_…you can't do this…"

"I am so sorry," Linai said gently, as Shrive went over and lightly put her hand on Eír's back. "I can't even sedate the poor woman. It would have no effect, the chemical and electrical imbalance is too great."

"How long?" Shrive asked her softly.

"Minutes…more likely seconds," the doctor responded.

"_No,_" Eír sniffled again, then looked pleadingly at Shrive. "Thug…he needs to be here, he-"

"They haven't even landed yet," Shrive said softly. "They won't be on the ground for another half hour-"

Eír sobbed again, burying her face against Gellian's neck, listening to her rapid breaths, her incoherent mumbles which were now little more than slurred nonsense sounds.

Unseeing, uncomprehending, Gellian's rapidly rolling gaze seemed to slow and drift. Her lips stopped all movement, only tiny forced puffs of air betraying any further attempt to speak. Eír gripped her harder, and a moment later even those puffs had faded away.

Eír felt Shrive's warm hand gently touch the back of her neck a moment before taking her shoulder, softly urging her back. With no more energy to resist, Eír sat back, her lavender eyes gone darker, her cheeks slick with tears. Linai reached out and pressed her fingers to Gellian's thin neck, waiting a moment or two before she slowly shook her head. Drawing them back, she closed the human woman's half-lidded gaze.

"Find peace from your suffering," she murmured to the silent human woman. "Find peace in the embrace of the Goddess."

Heart aching, head thick with misery, Eír turned and hugged tightly to Shrive, clinging in her grief to the only source of peace she knew.


	22. Chapter 22

A/N: The following chapter, and possibly part of the next, will not be canon. This scene has been kicking around in my head the last few days and absolutely insists on being written, so…I'm writing it. But you are forewarned.

Also, if this turns out the way I want, I highly recommend you don't read this while you're eating.

This takes place two days after the events of the last chapter.

* * *

><p>"I don't know," Garrus glanced askance at Shepard as they walked down the avenue of the lower markets of Omega. "I know <em>why<em> you cut it, but I think I kind of preferred it long."

Shepard shifted her swagman, ruffling the hair that now reached just to her shoulders. It was still slightly longer than she had kept it in the Alliance, but far more practical now than it had been.

"Well, after that fucker Hock had his hands all over it I couldn't wait to get rid of it," she replied as she reseated the hat. "What is it with males and long hair, anyway?"

"Well, I can't speak for _every_ species but…as a turian I find hair in general fascinating. The way it moves, the incredible array of colors and styles it comes in…it intrigues me. _You_ don't prefer females with long hair?" Garrus asked.

"I prefer females with _no_ hair," Shepard gave a switch-blade grin.

"I should warn Jack to look out then, I suppose?" he teased. Shepard barked a laugh, shaking her head.

Garrus was taking a slight risk walking around so openly on Omega, but as the general consensus around the station was that Archangel had been killed, and as Garrus had his lovely new scars to blur his identity, he had decided such a risk was microscopic, at best. Besides, he had promised Shepard he would look for Liara…and he could only do that while off the _Normandy._

Glancing back, Shepard saw Jacob was lingering at a merchant's stall, arguing over mods for his amp.

"I take it you haven't found any leads," she said, folding her arms as she leaned against a post, gaze still off on Jacob.

"Nothing yet. Half a dozen of my contacts have heard of or even done indirect business with her, but I can't pinpoint a location," Garrus answered, knowing exactly what she was referring to. "It's only a matter of time, Shepard. If I could work on board the ship I'd have a location for you within an hour. So would Kasumi or Zaeed. Being restricted to public extranet terminals when we're dockside handicaps things."

Shepard bobbed her head. "I know. I appreciate your help, Garrus."

"I know you do."

Looking at her chrono she shook her head. "Well, our time is up anyway. Gabby and Ken should have those new couplings on board right now, and they can be installed during flight. We need to head back on board."

Whistling sharply as she straightened, she waved a hand. When Jacob glanced over she tapped her chrono, then jabbed a thumb in the direction of the docking bay. He nodded, starting concluding his deal with the merchant as Shepard and Garrus began on their weaving course back toward the upper plaza.

As they neared the lifts, they saw a couple of Aria's agents breaking up a rather bad brawl between a pair of batarians, and decided to detour a little and take the secondary lifts just an alleyway away.

"Hopefully Kasumi or Zaeed had better luck," Shepard began as they stepped into an alley. Then she paused suddenly, touching Garrus's arm. The turian looked at her, tensing at the expression on her face.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," she murmured. Her eyes were searching over every shadow or doorway, but nothing untoward was in sight. "I got a strange feeling..."

Suddenly the door behind them snapped shut. Shepard reflexively reached for the pistol on her hip in the same heartbeat she felt a vague sting against her neck. Her fast motion seemed to elongate and pull out like taffy, a decade passing before she felt the grip of the pistol against her fingertips. The world was leaning to one side, stretching her out and pulling her away, swallowing her up into darkness.

* * *

><p>For Garrus, it all happened incredibly fast. As the door to the alleyway snapped shut, he reached for his own weapon. He could see Shepard's hand dart down to her pistol even as her knees suddenly buckled, dropping her in an ungraceful slump to the floor.<p>

_Sniper! _

Heart thundering with adrenaline, he ducked back under cover almost before thought, his assault rifle now in hand.

A hidden sniper, it had to be. He didn't even dare glance over at Shepard's limp form, unsure if she was alive or dead, but knowing they would _both_ be dead if the sniper pegged him too.

He tapped his omni-tool with one talon, his unwavering weapon covering the area in front of him. He tried to open a comm channel to the _Normandy _but the signal was dampened, connection impossible.

_Someone planned this well._

Switching it over to infrared scan he suddenly gasped as he felt pain lance between two plates on his neck, a breath before everything changed to black.

* * *

><p>A vaguely humanoid shimmer appeared beside Garrus, the cloak fading away to reveal a grim-faced batarian. Stepping over the unconscious turian, he crouched down at the human woman's side, gripping her shoulder and rolling her over onto her back. The small needle in her neck glimmered faintly, and he plucked it out delicately, dropping it into a tiny container he then secreted into a pouch. Removing a tech pad he picked her arm up by the wrist, plastering her palm down to the pad. A moment later, it beeped. Smirking, the batarian touched his ear bud.<p>

"This is Kelk," he said. "I have Shepard."

_{ID confirmed?}_ a woman's voice demanded.

"Perfect DNA match."

_{And she's out? You're absolutely sure she's completely out?}_

"I gave her enough tranq to drop a rabid elcor," he replied with a snort. "She's out."

_{Make_ sure. _The last thing we need is the bitch waking up.}_

Kelk rolled all four of his eyes, but obediently withdrew an optic scan from his pouch. Unconcerned with being even remotely gentle, he grabbed Shepard's forehead and peeled back her eyelid with his thumb. He could see from the size of her pupil and its barely perceptible, sluggish reactivity to the light that the human woman was not playing possum, but he shone the device into her eye anyway, scanning.

Glancing at the results, he nodded.

"Scan confirmed, she's out. She won't approach anything even remotely related to consciousness for at least twenty-four hours."

_{And she'll be out of our hands by then. Good work, Kelk. Bring her aboard before her crew gets suspicious. Was she alone?}_

"Nah, she had a turian with her. Ugly fuck."

_{Dead?}_

"Unconscious. Hit him with the same dose I gave her. He folded like laundry."

_{Hide him but don't take too long about it. Hopefully by the time anyone figures out what's going on, we'll be well on our way.}_

"Understood. Kelk out."

Grabbing hold of the turian, he hauled the man out of sight before dropping him to the ground and tugging out the tiny needle he'd jabbed in his neck. Satisfied the turian wouldn't be easily spotted, he went back to the human woman.

Swiftly and clinically he frisked her, removing her pistols and the knife from her boot, before relieving her of her omni-tool as well. Finding her lighter and cigar case, she opened the latter and sniffed at the cigars, before wrinkling his nose and closing it again.

Humans had such unsavory tastes.

Gathering up her belongings he went and dumped them on the turian, casting her hat over the man's face as well with a disdainful smirk, before returning to her side.

Lifting her he slung her over his shoulder, and reactivated his cloak.

_Don't see why everyone thinks she's so tough,_ he thought as he started back toward his ship. _She dropped as sweet and simple as a baby._

* * *

><p>Miranda looked over from the CIC as Jacob strode in, a small pack on his back. Straightening, she nodded.<p>

"Good, you're back. I was just about to call. We've got all parts on board and are ready for departure."

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Got caught haggling over an upgrade. Shepard's not pissed, is she?"

"Shepard…?" Miranda blinked, brows knitting. "I thought Shepard was _with_ you."

Jacob stopped, lifting his brows. "No, she left with Garrus to head back here almost fifteen minutes ago. Should have been here by now."

Now Miranda was concerned. Shepard was many things, but she was first and foremost a soldier and a commander. Her foot would have been on deck the second she said she would return, and they'd have heard some communication from her if she'd been delayed.

Turning toward communication she asked, "Private?"

"I've just pinged Commander Shepard's omni-tool," Private Hallek reported. "I'm showing it as a no return…it's been deactivated."

"Deactivated?" Concern was turning to alarm. "What about Vakarian?"

A momentary pause, then Hallek looked at her. "Active but no response."

"Can you trace it?" She asked, leaning over the private even as she asked and doing it herself."There. It's stationary, just off the lower marketplace. That alleyway."

"That's not far from where I was when she started back here," Jacob replied, also looking over the private's shoulder.

"Get Goto and Massani up here," Miranda ordered. "Hawthorne, Hoffsteader, you too! I want a full squad with me in that alleyway _yesterday_!"

* * *

><p>"Garrus…Garrus, can you hear me?"<p>

"Is he breathing?"

"Yeah, kinda shallow though. He's alive," Jacob murmured. "Don't see any wounds. I think he's just sedated."

"We need to get him back to Chakwas," Miranda said, then looked over at Goto, who was carefully scanning the alleyway. "Anything?"

The thief shook her head. "Nothing yet. Whoever did this was good."

Miranda's dark brows knit a moment as she regarded Garrus. Jacob shook his head. "Nuh uh. I know what you're thinking," he said. "I could _almost_ buy Shepard suddenly taking off on her own, going to look for T'Soni maybe…but if she was going to do something like that, she'd take Garrus with her or send him to cover for her, not sedate him. And she sure as hell wouldn't have left her hat, weapons, and omni-tool behind."

Miranda nodded. He was right, of course, and she had already been telling herself those things, but some small part of her hadn't been able to help the thought. Shepard had been too cheerful lately, and her mood could easily be a cover to hide something.

"The alley is clean," Goto said, frustration and worry in her voice.

"We need to get Garrus back to the ship," Miranda ordered. "Maybe Chakwas can deduce something from whatever sedative is in his system. This happened, at the outside, forty-five minutes ago. Whoever took Shepard would have wanted to get her on a ship and off this station as swiftly as possible. I want a complete list of every ship to depart from this station in the last hour."

"That's gonna be a long list," Massani told her. "Gonna take a while to narrow it down."

"Then we'd best get started," Miranda said sternly. "This galaxy is _not_ losing her again."

* * *

><p><em>It is upon the stars that we weep<em>

_On all Heaven's shallow meaning_

_Without you_

_All forgotten_

_Without you_

_Light is dust…_

In the dim, sickly yellow light, the unconscious human shifted a little, dark brows knitting, face tightening in almost pain.

_Liara…why are you so sad? Tianlán, I'm looking for you. I won't give up. I swear I won't give up. I'm here, Li…I can hear you. I can hear you. I'm right…Li…?_

The echoing of song, the memory of a pair of blue eyes, sifted away like powder and was gone, replaced by an awareness of pain, nausea, self. Shepard's eyelids felt like they each weighed as much as the _Normandy_. Her mouth felt clogged with glue, and every joint vaguely ached. The real pain was in her head, a throbbing reddened pulse that sang more of hangover than anything else.

_I must have really tied one on_, she thought groggily as she struggled to open her eyes. Thin yellow light lanced like the sun as she finally managed it, then winced against it. Tears blurred her gaze in reaction as she struggled to focus.

No…no, the light was not that strong, barely a glow. Most everything around her was dark. That light…she tried to fixate on it, figure out where it was coming from. It seemed to take an eternity but at last the source seemed to focus.

_It's glow-strip…poor man's emergency lighting. This…isn't my room. I don't…where am I?_

Ignoring the pounding in her head she weakly licked her lips, her whole mouth feeling as though someone had dusted it with sand. She recognized the numb detachment. Drugs. Someone had drugged her. But who? And where was she now?

Had it really been Liara she'd heard and seen? No…no, it couldn't have been. A dream, that's all…some vague shred of a memory, perhaps. She didn't dare think or hope it might be more than this.

Laying still, breathing evenly, letting her mind slowly clear she did her best to take stock. Besides the ache and fuzz of sedation, she didn't seem to be injured. She was laying on some kind of hard metal surface. The room around her, what she could see of it, looked like some kind of small storage space, illuminated only by the cheap glow-strip. No one else seemed to be there.

With every moment that passed, her head seemed to be clearing more and more. Garrus. She'd been with Garrus…on Omega. Heading back to the _Normandy_. They'd gone around a fight, stepped into an alley and then…

Her teeth grit. She vaguely remembered thinking something was wrong, and then nothing but darkness until now. Someone clever had managed to drug her, sneak her away. That she was still on the station was possible, but highly unlikely. Chances are her captors would want to put as much distance as possible between them and the _Normandy_ as they could, as swiftly as they could manage it. Which meant that she was on a ship.

A ship of unknown size, with an unknown amount of crew.

She could feel that she was bound, feel the cold of cuffs on her wrists and ankles. Her feet were bare, which meant someone had taken her boots and socks, but she was otherwise dressed…and as far as she could tell, it was in her own clothing.

She shifted slightly to test her binds when she heard an ominous, tell-tale click. She froze. After a moment or two, the click repeated, slightly softer.

"Meat-hooks," she murmured, her voice sounding as thick and vague as her head felt.

Meat-hooks, or as they were more formally called, an 'anti-escape shackling system', were a nasty bit of work. Resembling a regular shackle with a slightly thicker cuff, meat-hooks had a sensor system that detected movement. Any movement beyond a pre-disposed amount, and the hooks would click in warning as their trigger system was activated. Any additional movement, and the hooks would release a hundred pencil-lead-thin steel spikes. Set to emerge at an angle, their diamond polished tips pointed toward the thickest flesh of hand or foot, the hooks would dig in to their shackled victim, sinking only deeper and holding only the tighter at any attempt to thwart them.

If you heard the warning click and froze, after a few moments the hooks would 'reset' back to their rest state…though any further attempt to move would once again be met with the warning click. As far as Shepard could tell, she had meat-hooks on both wrists and both ankles. Trying to slip any one of those cuffs would be…unpleasant.

_All right, Shep. Let's weigh our options. You're half-drugged, being held down by meat-hooks. You have no idea the size or crew compliment of the ship you're on. You don't know the race, armament, or motivation of those who took you. However you _are _alone._

No guard within the room did not preclude one being outside the door, however it gave her an advantage. This truly was a storage room…she could see no real power conduits or consoles, which meant that there were likely no cameras or direct surveillance on her. Which meant they were either on a very small ship, someone was trying to hide her from the rest of the crew, or they didn't expect her to wake up until they reached their destination. All of this worked to her advantage.

Her first priority was to get loose. Her second, assess the situation and eliminate threat. Her third, find a communications hub and get hold of the _Normandy_. Unless this was a very large ship that meant getting to the helm or the CIC.

_One step at a time, Shepard. First, you gotta get loose_.

Grimacing, Shepard lifted her head a little, looking down along her body as best she could. She was right, she was in her own clothes. Then a cold, resolved look came to her face.

They hadn't taken her belt.

Laying her head back, she closed her eyes a moment, then took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

_Fuck. This is going to __**hurt**_.

She shifted slightly, and heard the warning click. Forcing herself not to ball up her left hand, Shepard touched her thumb to her fingertips in order to make it as narrow as possible, then yanked.

Instantly the little metal spikes dug into her flesh and she grunted between clenched teeth. Muscles knotting, she didn't dare let herself stop now that she'd begun. Even as the hooks dug in deep, she continued to pull.

The pain rose astronomically. She could feel the hot slick of blood as the hooks shredded skin and tore into muscle, sinking ever deeper until she could feel their finely-pointed tips skidding over bone. And still she pulled.

Her lips had gone white, stretched over her bared teeth as she fought not to scream. She was no stranger to pain but neither was she immune to it. To let out the smallest peep now could potentially alert whomever was on the other side of the door.

_Don't stop! Just don't stop!_ she ordered herself, and when she felt the jagged teeth dig in against the crest of her thumb, she forced herself to put all her effort into one enormous yank.

There was an audible crack as her thumb broke. She could feel mangled flesh peeling backward, nerves and muscle shredding as her hand ripped free.

Her head spun, and for a moment or two, Shepard was on the cusp of fainting. Forcing herself to take slow breaths she urged the dizziness away. She had to move quickly now.

Reaching over with her mangled hand, she managed to press the release for the cuff on her right hand. It popped open, and she pushed herself up into a sit, quickly releasing her feet as well. Sitting up she unfastened her belt awkwardly with one hand, tugging it loose of her jeans before forming a loop. Slipping it over her wounded hand and up past her elbow, she hauled the loop as tight as she was able to, twisted it, then tied it down. The blood flooding from the ruins of her wrist slowed visibly, and for a moment Shepard regarded her hand.

The shredded skin had degloved in several ragged strips that now hung downward over her fingers. Chunks of muscle had been peeled away as well, baring gleams of bone and gristle. The blood was copious and dark, and still flowed somewhat even with the makeshift tourniquet.

Lifting her good hand she hauled her t-shirt off and wound it around the remains of her left, wrapping it as tightly as she could stomach and tying it tightly. When she was done she looked like she wore a haphazard boxing glove.

Cradling her wounded arm protectively against her side, Shepard hopped down off the table, and fully assessed her surroundings.

The storage room was more or less empty, save the table she'd been shackled to and a pair of cabinets. Tearing open the cabinets she rifled through them. Some spare coolant packs…useless. Two small pre-fab covers for console access ports…also useless.

A surge of nausea and dizziness broke over her like a wave crashing to shore. Resting her forehead against the cabinet she closed her eyes and forced herself to take deep breaths, to re-center. Pain could be compartmentalized. She'd felt worse than this before. She had to center and get moving. Even with the tourniquet and make-shift bandage the bleeding, while slowed, hadn't stopped. She had to get _moving_.

Head steady again she continued her rummaging, finally coming out with a small anti-grav hammer.

It was a nifty little device, used for repair work. No larger than the handle of a pistol and shaped almost exactly the same, the hammer produced a tiny anti-grav field when the trigger was halfway depressed. Small objects, such as bolts for example, could be suspended in this tiny field, and then the hammer aimed at where you wanted the bolt to go. Pulling the trigger the rest of the way would launch the bolt at incredible speed, sinking it into whatever surface needed binding.

A potentially useful weapon…if she could find something small enough to shoot with it. Further searching, however, revealed nothing else.

_Fuck! C'mon, shit! All I need is a little piece of met_-

She paused, blinking a moment, before she set the hammer down and ran a hand over her neck and collar bone, fingers catching on the thin gold chain and small cross that used to belong to Nancy.

_Sorry, Nan_, she silently apologized, before tugging the necklace off. _But you just might save my life_.

Setting the necklace on the top of the cabinet, she depressed the hammer's trigger, capturing the little cross in the anti-grav beam. As she moved the hammer upward, the cross followed, part of the chain drifting along in the beam as well, part dangling free of it.

Her make-shift weapon in hand, Shepard edged carefully to the door.

As it slid open, the batarian man just outside of it glanced around. The surprised look on his face lasted only a moment before Shepard pulled the trigger.

Accelerated instantly to high-speed, the cross made a sound almost like an angry hornet as it sailed away from the hammer and sunk beautifully into the batarian's left upper eye. The man hadn't even managed to draw his weapon before he collapsed. Straddling him an instant later, casting aside the hammer, Shepard hooked the end of the golden chain half-draped on his cheek, and drew the cross back out. It had hit hard enough to penetrate into the man's brain, killing him instantly. Jelly from both that mass and his ruined eye were drawn out along with it.

Shepard winced a little when she saw the end of the cross was bent and deformed from its impact. Winding up the chain she slipped it into her pocket with another silent vote of thanks to Nan, before she unshipped the man's pistol, properly arming herself.

She also stole the batarian's omni-tool, powering it up and filing through its information. It revealed the ship as fairly small, a crew compliment of only twenty, and commanded by a batarian woman named Sikilke. Skimming over the schematics, Shepard switched the tool back off.

So far, so good. Now she just had to fight one handed through nineteen more batarians, make it to the helm, download their computer records to find out why the fuck they'd taken her to begin with, figure out their course and get a message off to the _Normandy_…all while half-drugged and bleeding.

"Piece of cake," she whispered, her pale grin wrathful and cold.

* * *

><p>Miranda's face was taut and grim as she regarded the galaxy map. It had taken two hours to track down all departures from the station to the top five most likely culprits, and another hour after that to pinpoint the ship that had taken Shepard as a small salvaged frigate owned by some batarian woman named Sikilke.<p>

It was her name that did it. It awakened a memory in Miranda's head, niggling at her until she went downstairs and researched it, cross-referencing her name to Shepard's.

The results were instant and conclusive. Sikilke was the mother to a boy named Ikta who had been with his uncle and several other slavers on Torfan. Ikta was the youngest of the batarians that had been there and one of the ones Shepard had been charged with executing.

As soon as she knew that she knew without a doubt what ship Shepard was on, and could only pray the Commander was still alive.

By then, however, the batarians had a four hour head-start. Pushing the _Normandy_ hard they balanced a fine line between losing the batarian ship and using every maneuver and trick they could to gain on it. Eight hours had gone by in the chase before, somehow, the batarian ship managed to give them the slip. They'd lost all track of it not fifteen minutes before, and Miranda was more than beginning to feel the strain.

"I have a signal," EDI suddenly announced, the blue orb instantly drawing all eyes.

"You found the ship?"

"Most likely. It is a communication signal originating not far from our current location. The encryption is batarian but the message itself is odd. I have an open voice signal but all that is coming through is a series of taps. It is in Morse code."

"Morse code?" Garrus asked with a blink.

"An old Earth code, dating back to the telegraph days," Jacob told him. "No one uses it any more but all marines are taught it…just in case."

"If it's Shepard, why doesn't she just speak? Put it through," Miranda ordered.

"I shall translate it as it is received," EDI stated. A moment later, they could hear a series of tapping sounds, as if someone were drumming the end of a spoon against a table. After the first few taps, EDI began to translate. "SOS. Need aid. This Shepard. Normandy. Need aid. Respond."

At the word _Shepard_ the entire CIC seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief. Miranda held up a hand and looked at EDI.

"Can we be heard?" She asked.

"Reverse communication is open," EDI confirmed.

"Commander Shepard, this is Miranda," she said. "We need to confirm your ID. We have to know it's actually you and not a batarian trap. Please, verify your ID."

A few more labored taps could be heard before EDI matter-of-factly stated the translation.

"Fuck."

"That's the Commander all right," Garrus grinned.

"Hang tight, Shepard, we're on our way," Miranda replied. "We're not far. ETA about fifteen minutes. Is the ship secure? Are you injured?"

The taps were slow to resume, and seemed sluggish, but after a moment EDI began to translate again.

"Ship secure. Need aide. Please hurry."

There was a long ominous silence before a few more laconic taps came through. When EDI spoke her final translation, Miranda felt her blood go cold.

"I think I'm dying."

* * *

><p>Were it left up to the krogan, Gellian Osco's body would have been stripped and then dropped somewhere in the wilderness. Once the spirit was gone, the flesh was garbage, only good to feed scavengers and the dry soil of the world.<p>

Fortunately, it was not the krogan who made the final decision. Though they had no sea they did have fire, and Misira dictated, with Eír's approval, that Gellian would go the way of the asari.

The flames of the pyre reached high, the black smoke smudging across the azure blue of the sky. Eír stood beside Thug as they watched the remains of the only mother they knew vanish into roiling orange and red. Thug was as stoic and dry-eyed as ever a krogan was, but Eír's cheeks were damp enough for them both, and she clung to her brother's hand with a weakness she was unaccustomed to.

As the rumbling flames surged through the afternoon they were punctuated by song. Ethereal, lovely, melancholy and yet joyful at the same time, the music lifted from three asari throats, the trio of women standing only a few yards away.

Matriarch Misira had begun the ritual lamentation, but in moments both Dr. Linai and Shrive had joined her. There were no words to the tune. It was simple emotion, an expression of the joy they felt for having been blessed to have the departed in their lives, joy that the departed had gone to the side of the Goddess, and the grief they felt for being left behind.

Eír thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. It made her heart and her head ache. If she had known the song she might have joined in.

The lament only died when the flames did, their feast consumed and done. The pyre had collapsed to embers when the krogan turned to head inside. Thug gave Eír's hand one last understanding squeeze before he went to join them. Eír lingered, now dry-eyed, as the embers slowly began to grow cold.

When a hand slipped into hers she blinked and looked up. Everyone else had gone now. It was just the two of them. Turning toward Shrive she hugged the girl tightly, hiding her face in the huntress' shoulder, just wanting to be held.

"That song was beautiful," she murmured after a time.

"It was an asari Sending lamentation," Shrive told her softly. "Were we on Thessia, her body would have been commended to the sea."

Eír straightened, looking at the cold ash a moment. "Humans…I have heard they do many different things," she said, her voice low and her recited words flat and rote. "Some bury their dead in the ground. Others use fire, as we did. Those who live in space send their bodies to the stars. And there are some, who live in high mountains, who set their dead before carrion birds, restoring their remains to the wheel of life."

Shrive's hand sought out hers again. "I am sorry you lost her," she said with genuine sympathy. Eír lowered her gaze.

"I lost her because I was a fool," she sniffled, feeling the tears rise again. "I lost her because I didn't listen, because the Goddess sought to punish me for-"

She broke off, shaking her head. Shrive looked at her in concern.

"Eír, the Goddess did not do this to punish you. Gellian was ill for a very long time. Her _entire life_. She fought against it well but she could not fight forever. She knew this. The Goddess didn't do this to you because of some imagined crime."

Eír wiped a hand over her cheek, then loosened her grip from Shrive's.

"Maybe," she murmured.

"Eír…"

"I need to…I want to be alone," she murmured, then turned and walked away. Shrive's brows knit as she watched her go, before she closed her eyes. The first tears she had shed trailed down her cheeks at the motion.

_Goddess, please. Help her to understand..._


	23. Chapter 23

A/N: More non-canon.

* * *

><p>The small batarian ship was adrift. Miranda stood at Joker's shoulder as he guided the <em>Normandy<em> cautiously in toward it, EDI bathing it with a scan.

"Main engines are offline, however there _is_ gravity and life-support. Some power transfer systems are offline and the helm is nonresponsive. You will have heat and air, but very little in the way of light. I am also showing a hull breach at the helm. It is rather significant, and seems to have been caused by an explosive force originating in the helm itself. The breach is sealed safely with a barrier, and there is adequate power for the barrier to sustain for quite some time."

"Infrared signatures?" Miranda asked.

"Results are inconclusive."

"Joker, lock us on," she ordered. "We're going aboard. I'll take a group in first, secure the ship and locate Shepard. I want Chakwas and the medical team through that airlock the moment we give the all clear."

* * *

><p><em>Twenty minutes earlier…<em>

The stars shone through the gaping hole in the side of the helm, glimmering as cold and steady as diamond chips beyond the faint shimmer of the barrier. One of the consoles, ripped in half, spat occasional sparks, its holographic interface sputtering and flashing an error.

A trembling pair of white fingers streaked with red pressed the reset on the cobbled together power bypass. Slowly one of the other consoles flickered back into life, its interface brightening first to amber, and then to green.

Blood pattered to the ground as a body shifted. A t-shirt, wadded around a hand and soaked maroon, shifted slightly beneath her chin as haunted brown eyes fixed on the communications interface. She managed to open a channel, pinging the _Normandy_'s ident signature. Even as the ping went through, her shaking hand closed on a shard of metal.

Lifting it to the edge of the console she began to tap. Morse code. It was a fucking miracle she remembered any of it, but they had drilled it into their heads all through boot. She supposed she couldn't really forget it, even if she tried.

_Help_, she tapped. _Normandy, respond. This Shepard. Aide needed_.

She wasn't even sure they were receiving, and repeated the message. Halfway through, the batarian ship's VI announced an open line. A breath later, she heard EDI's voice.

"You are connected."

_SOS. Need aid. This Shepard. Normandy. Need aid. Respond, _she tapped. She knew that coordinates were not required…if they could receive the comm signal they could pinpoint its origin location with ease.

"Commander Shepard, this is Miranda," the Australian replied. "We need to confirm your ID. We have to know it's actually you and not a batarian trap. Please, verify your ID."

Fuck. What was her ID? Her head was swimming and thick. She was kneeling at the console as it was, her head resting on its edge even as she put all her concentration and energy into tapping. A number as familiar to her as her own name was suddenly a mystery.

Slowly, desperately, she tapped out the only thing she could think of.

_Fuck_.

"That's the Commander all right," she heard Garrus pipe up in the background. She sagged down into a sit, eyelids drooping.

"Hang tight, Shepard, we're on our way," Miranda replied. "We're not far. ETA about fifteen minutes. Is the ship secure? Are you injured?"

_Ship secure. Need aide. Please hurry._ Each tap seemed to take an eternity to produce. In all honesty, she wasn't even sure that the words she was intending to form were what she was actually transmitting. Her eyelids fluttered. Her head felt like a thousand pound weight.

_I think I'm dying._

The metal tumbled from her fingers as she slumped, back against the wall. Tenuously she struggled to hold on to consciousness, her eyes moving to the gaping rent in the side of the helm, and the stars beyond. Fifteen minutes. It was an eternity, an impossibility. She shifted her bandaged hand again. She could only feel a vague heat, the rest of her seemed as cold a marble.

_You're not dying here, Shepard_, she ordered herself. _Not here, and not like this. You have to see Liara again. You have to tell her you are sorry._

The stars watched her implacably as her weary brown eyes slipped closed.

* * *

><p>Beyond the sickly yellow of the cheap emergency lighting strips, and the occasional glow from a console, the batarian ship was smothered in darkness. A swarm of omni-lights moved through the lock from the <em>Normandy<em>, the crew quickly fanning out with weapons ready.

Miranda was in the lead, but Kasumi, Jacob, and Garrus were not far behind. As the first light landed on the first batarian corpse, Garrus hummed to himself.

"This _definitely_ looks like her work," he murmured.

"You, portside," Miranda ordered, gesturing at three of the crew. "You, starboard. We're heading straight up to the CIC. If it moves and has more than two eyes, _shoot it_."

Continuing on toward the helm revealed more and more batarian bodies. Most were shot. A couple looked battered around, heads laying at odd angles on their broken necks. A few dents and scorch marks lined the floor and hull where weapons-fire had missed its target. Stepping over and around the bodies Miranda broke into a trot as they neared the helm, but it was Kasumi who darted ahead and entered first.

A breath later the thief called out. "I found her! Hurry!"

Miranda and Garrus entered a second later, taking in the amazing sight in an instant.

Four batarians lay dead, scattered around the helm. So much blood had been spilled it formed small lakes on the metal floor. A good three meters of the starboard-side bridge was gone, the gaping rent showing the shimmer of a barrier, and stars beyond. Given the twists of metal and the black scorches fanning out almost across the entire helm, it was clear the breach was caused by an explosion originating on the inside of the ship, rather than without. Location said it wasn't an equipment malfunction or overload…more likely some kind of small incendiary explosion. Grenade, perhaps.

Kasumi was crouched beside Shepard, who was slumped between the communications console and the far wall. She sat with right leg outstretched, her left knee drawn up to her chest. Her right hand was limp at her side. Her left was wadded with what looked like her shirt, soaked black with blood and actively dripping. This hand was held up in an odd position under her chin.

Her torso, sports bra, and jeans were painted with crimson, and Miranda could see glimmers of metal both in the right leg of her jeans and peppered along her right side; shrapnel. Her face was flat pale, lips blue and eyes sunk in grey-brown hollows. They were closed.

"She's breathing," Kasumi said as Miranda rushed over. As she crouched as well, however, Shepard's eyelids half opened and the woman jolted slightly, her right hand slapping at her hip weakly as she instinctively reached for a weapon that wasn't there.

"Shepard, it's us," Miranda soothed. "We're here."

"Ship's clear," Jacob said from the doorway.

"Get Chakwas and the medics aboard, now!" Miranda snapped at him, then looked back at the commander. Reaching for her awkwardly held, bound hand, she blinked as Shepard faintly recoiled, shaking her head slightly.

"All right," Miranda murmured. "I won't touch it."

Chakwas and her assistant appeared only moments later, but it felt like an eternity. Shepard had closed her eyes again despite Miranda's admonitions not to, but her faint, shallow breathing did not abate.

Kasumi moved to allow Chakwas room as the doctor knelt nearby. She, too, reached for Shepard's bandaged hand. Truly unconscious now, Shepard did not recoil as Chakwas drew the limb with its soaked make-shift bandage away.

"Oh my God," Miranda heard the looming Kasumi gasp.

"Medi-gel, now!" Chakwas ordered her assistant.

A jagged piece of metal, two or three inches wide, was embedded in the Commander's neck, just to the right of her trachea. Blood was not pumping but it was spilling steadily from around the metal, and given the color and amount, Helen knew the carotid at the least had been badly knicked. The very metal shard that had caused the injury was also the only thing keeping Shepard alive. Had the commander had the bad sense to try and pull it out, she would have been dead in moments.

Her assistant popped open a medi-gel packet and Chakwas slathered it around the shard, sealing the wound closed enough to halt the flow of blood. "We need to get her back to the _Normandy_ and into surgery, now," she ordered.

Garrus helped to lift the limp commander onto a hover gurney, Chakwas stabilizing her head so that the wound in her neck didn't tear. As Miranda and Kasumi moved to follow, the former ordered EDI to do a full data-mine of the ship's computer systems.

Under the stark lights of the _Normandy_'s medical bay, Shepard looked even worse than she had on the batarian vessel. Normally tan with a hint toward red, her skin was now flat white and gray, blue around her lips and eyelids. The red of her spilled blood was garishly bright. Shifting her from gurney to bio-bed Chakwas immediately began directing her medical team to start fluids, medications and blood replacement. Miranda didn't hesitate to roll up her sleeves and sterilize, before returning to Chakwas's side. She had spent two years literally re-growing the woman from the ground up, and she'd be damned if she wasn't going to help save her life any way she could.

* * *

><p><em>Shepard planted her feet, her pistol aimed at the spot right between all of Sikilke's four eyes. The batarian woman had her hand in front of her, as if offering a gift. Nestled on her palm, thumb pressing to the safety, the grenade shimmered in the glow of the equipment console.<em>

_Shepard could not remember ever being at such an impossible impasse. The grenade was already armed. If Sikilke lifted her thumb it would detonate. In such a small space, if that grenade went off they would both be dead. It would shred through the bulkhead, so mere flesh would hardly be an obstacle to it. _

_The only chance she had was to talk the batarian woman down and get her to set the disarm before the grenade went off. _

"_We'll both die if you let go of that trigger," Shepard warned, trying to appeal to the woman's better sense. _

"_Do you think I have anything left to live for?" Sikilke asked. "You killed my only son!"_

Your son was a murdering slaver, _Shepard wanted to spit, but for the sake of her hide she didn't. _

"_I'm sorry for your loss," Shepard told her. "I'm sorry for your pain, and your grief…but this is not the way-"_

"_And what is the way?" Sikilke demanded. "You're a human hero! They only _pretended _to try you for your crimes, a petty farce of justice! What justice did my boy get? He gets to rot in an unmarked grave while his murderer walks free!"_

"_So why didn't you just kill me?" Shepard asked. "You had me, Sikilke. Drugged and helpless. Why let me live? Where are you taking me?"_

"_I don't want you to just _die_," Sikilke spat. "I want you to_ suffer_! There are those who would pay a great deal for your suffering, those who would carve you apart alive, submit you to tortures you cannot even imagine."_

"_Who, Sikilke?" Shepard asked._ _"_Who _were you taking me to?"_

_Sikilke smiled, a cold and maddened expression. "They _will_ destroy you," she promised. "They will destroy _all_ of your people, wipe your filth from _every _corner of the stars. The death of the human race is theirs to deal but _you…_I'm kind of glad things unfolded like this. I'm glad I get to taste your blood for myself, even if I must die with you!"_

_Seeing the gleam in her eye Shepard gasped, "Don't!" even as the woman's thumb lifted, releasing the button. _

_Sedatives still in her system, coupled with exhaustion, shock and blood-loss, and Shepard's reflexes were only a ghost of their former selves. She barely had time to half turn, intending to launch herself as far across the helm as she was able, when the grenade erupted._

_Sikilke was vaporized instantly, the blast tearing through the side of the helm. Shepard felt the slicing pain of a dozen different shards of metal even as heat and concussion lifted her off her feet. Slamming into the far bulkhead, she crumpled to the ground. _

_As sense slowly returned she became aware of the narrowness of her breath, a thin line of heat being drawn with every inhalation. Eyes focusing as she tried to sit, she saw blood spilling down onto the metal in far too thick a stream, and frantically groped for her neck. Feeling the shrapnel buried there she pressed her bandaged hand around it, desperately trying to stem the flow. Turning into a sit, head already swimming, she stared sadly at the rent in the side of the ship, knowing it was only pure fortune she hadn't been immediately killed._

* * *

><p>"Don't…" the word was faint, barely an outlet of air between a pair of weakly moving lips. Kasumi straightened, peering at Shepard's face a moment before looking over.<p>

"Helen, I think she's waking up," she said. Chakwas rose from her desk and moved over, glancing at the read-outs from the bio-bed. Her brainwave patterns were slowly spiking toward consciousness.

"Shepard, shhh," Chakwas murmured, lightly laying the palm of her hand against Shepard's cheek. "Take it easy. You're safe."

The commander's head moved slightly before her brows knit, eyes cracking open. She blinked at Chakwas, then tried to focus on Kasumi, who was smiling.

"You are _officially_ the toughest person I know," the small thief declared. "And I know _krogan_."

"M'balls are bigger too…" Shepard slurred with a weak smile, her voice little more than a rasp. She winced.

"No, no talking, Commander," Chakwas ordered. "You had some very serious damage to your throat. You're beyond lucky to be alive. A few millimeters more and your carotid would have been completely severed. We were able to save your hand, as well. You'll even get full use of it back."

"Good…doctor…" Shepard mouthed.

Chakwas shook her head. "Oh no. I _am_ a good doctor but I can't take credit for that. That one was thanks to Miranda. Well, her and those little nanites still crawling around in your system. I do have some bad news, however. You might want to brace yourself."

Shepard blinked at her tiredly, brows knitting. Chakwas smiled gently.

"I'm afraid the repairs won't be completely seamless. Shepard…I'm so sorry. You're going to have scars."

When Shepard grinned Chakwas did as well. "Get some more rest, Commander. You still have a lot of healing to do. Get some rest…and welcome home."

Shepard could feel her eyes drifting shut again. She had no energy to fight it, and soon had fallen back to sleep. Chakwas rested her hand lightly against the woman's forehead a moment, before she looked at Kasumi.

"She'll be all right. Two more days and she'll be pitching a fit that I won't let her back on duty."

"I still can't believe she ripped herself free of meat-hooks," Kasumi stated.

"I don't want to imagine it," Helen agreed. "Lazarus project aside…they just don't make them like her anymore."

Then she shook her head. "Go and get some rest, Kasumi. I chased Garrus out of here already and I have no problem chasing you out too. Go on. She'll be up to talking tomorrow for a bit, I'm sure."

* * *

><p>"She was just a sad, angry woman who happened to be bat-shit insane," Shepard mumbled around her cigar as she jabbed at the sandbag. Right hand only…her left was still not up for punching things. "Now she's dead, and I'm fine. No use fretting over what-ifs."<p>

"I agree," Kelly replied. She was perched on a bench in the small gym off of Shepard's quarters, but she was not the only one there. Kasumi sat cross-legged on the floor nearby, and Gabriella was busy sipping an off-duty beer, leaning on the wall near the bench.

_I can't believe I'm part of a fucking 'girl's club'_, Shepard thought wryly, and swung another punch.

"But even _though_ I agree with that, the long and short of it is, you were tortured, Shepard," Kelly continued. Shepard shook her head, wiping a wrist over her forehead.

"I _wasn't_ tortured," she protested.

"Forced to pull your own hand free of meat-hooks?" Gabriella snorted. "_I'd_ call that tortured."

"They didn't force me, I did it on my own," Shepard retorted.

"Because they left you no alternative," Kelly reminded her gently. "If you hadn't done so, you'd be a prisoner of the Collectors right now."

EDI's data-mine of the batarian ship and a miniscule dose of common sense had revealed that it was the Collectors that Sikilke was intending to deliver Shepard to. She wasn't all that surprised at the reveal. The Collectors had tried to take her body before the Lazarus project, Kuril had indicated someone was offering a large amount of credits in exchange for her delivery, and now Sikilke's attempt. One would have to be blind and an idiot not to see the connection.

Slightly more interesting, apparently they'd given her enough sedative to keep her out for twenty-four hours, but she had awakened after less than half that. It seemed her nanite buddies and her still-stimulated metabolism had the added bonus of reducing the effectiveness of such narcotics. Again, a fortunate turn.

"Why are you trying to psychoanalyze me now?" Shepard asked with a faint scowl that was only half serious. Her gloved hand swept around, indicating Daniels and Kasumi. "In front of these fine ladies?"

"Fine ladies?" Kasumi snorted with a grin, glancing at Gabriella. "Gabby? Do _you_ see any fine ladies around here?"

"Not a single one," the engineer replied. Shepard rolled her eyes, then shook her head.

"My _point_ is…I'm fine. I have a job to do and right now that job is to get back into shape."

She swung one more punch at the bag. Truth be told her wounds were healing just fine. Her hand ached now and again and reacted stiffly but save for an angry red line of healing scar tissue around her wrist and a couple of paper-thin ones along the back and palm of her hand, it was all but impossible to tell it had even been hurt. Miranda's muscle regeneration techniques and nerve repair protocols were top notch.

Beyond that, she had a few tiny shrapnel scars along her side, one slightly larger one in her leg, and of course the most dramatic one of all stretching three inches along the side of her neck, a bright red slash that would pale to white over time.

In Shepard's mind she had only done what she had to do…like always. She'd survived, they'd lost. She'd proven she was stronger. As she'd told Chakwas before, it was useless to go stabbing at the ocean just for being the ocean.

"Even so-" Kelly began, a moment before the door call for Shepard's quarters rang through the gym.

"We're having a regular party," Shepard grumped, before calling out. "Come in! We're in the gym."

A few moments later the door opened, revealing Miranda. The woman looked troubled, glancing from Shepard to the other women.

"Shepard, I need to speak with you," she said tightly. "If…you have a moment?"

Narrowing her eyes slightly Shepard nodded. "You heard the XO, girls," she stated. "Vámonos."

As the three others vacated the room, Shepard moved over and sat down on the bench, unlacing the single glove she'd been using to beat the sandbag.

Barely had the door closed than Miranda blurted out, "Shepard, I need your help."

Setting the glove aside and picking up her water bottle, Shepard nodded and took a swig. It still hurt a little to swallow, but not too bad. "Sure," she said, lowering the bottle. "What's the problem?"

* * *

><p>Miranda had been weighing her options frantically for a while now. That's what she did…thought things through, weighed options, came to a rational and workable solution.<p>

Only this time, emotion was threatening rationality, and her options were risking not only her orders, but the Illusive Man's wrath.

She knew that Shepard had yet to finish watching that call log between Liara and Nancy Salgado. Nor had Miranda yet used her virus program to eliminate it. She'd started to a dozen times, but something kept staying her hand.

For the first time in her career with Cerberus, she felt strongly in opposition to a decision the Illusive Man had taken. She still felt it would be in the best interests not only of Shepard, but of the mission in general were the commander reunited with Liara T'Soni. Right now, only her loyalty to the organization, her trust in the Illusive Man's judgment, was staying her hand.

And that's where her conundrum came in. As of now, against her own feelings, she was following her boss's directive and keeping Shepard from any knowledge of Liara T'Soni or her whereabouts…but she did desperately need her help, needed to go to Ilium.

And Liara was on Ilium.

_There are ways to keep Shepard and her apart, even still. It's a whole planet, for God's sake. Liara's offices are fifty kilometers away from where I need to go. If we keep the _Normandy _in orbit, go directly to the transport hub in the shuttle we can take care of it and be back and on our way out of orbit before even T'Soni's network can report we're there. _

She had to take the chance. No matter the risk that T'Soni and Shepard might reunite, Miranda _had_ to help Orianna.

Unable to sit or keep still, the Cerberus operative paced back and forth, arms folded as she spoke, explaining about her father (something Shepard had only heard the beginning of) and then about her sister. As she spoke, Shepard watched her pacing and listened quietly, never having seen the usually cool woman so agitated before.

"Cerberus has already made arrangements to move her to another location," Miranda concluded. "But there is still a risk…I want to _be_ there, Shepard. Oversee the transfer, make sure nothing goes wrong. I…I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to her. She deserves to have a normal life. I know its off-mission and…you're still healing, but-"

"This is on Ilium?" Shepard asked, taking another calm swig of her water bottle. Miranda nodded, and Shepard echoed it.

"Well then, I guess we're going to Ilium."

Miranda stared at her, slowly lowering her arms. She had honestly thought that Shepard would refuse. It's being handled, she'd say. Don't you trust your own people? she'd ask. Our mission is too important for any more silly delays, would be her excuse.

"R-Really?" Miranda blinked.

"Of course, Miranda," Shepard replied. "Listen, I may not like Cerberus, may not agree with your view on many…_many_ things, but you saved my life. More than once. You're part of my crew. If this is important to you, it's important to me. Besides, I need to stretch my legs a bit, get back into the swing of things. Let's go make sure your sister is safe."

Unexpected emotion moved through her and Miranda actually felt her eyes heat a little. "I…don't know what to say…"

"How about you start by saying, 'EDI, have Joker put us on a course for Ilium?'"

"Acknowledged, Shepard," EDI replied, and Shepard grinned with half a shrug.

"Or, _I_ could say it," she teased.

* * *

><p>Betrayal.<p>

In an occupation where you had to rely on others for your very life, one thing a marine couldn't stand or stand to see, was betrayal. Seeing the denial of it, the dawning awareness, and then the pained acceptance enter into Miranda's eyes was agonizing to behold.

When her gun snapped up, intending to erase her childhood friend from life, however, Shepard had to act. Reaching out her hand slapped down on Miranda's pistol, redirecting its muzzle toward the floor. When Miranda glared at her Shepard's eyes were stern but understanding.

"Don't," she murmured. "That's _not_ a ghost you want to live with."

The man, Niket, finally seemed to understand what it was he'd really done. Acting with what he thought were the best intentions, he had only made a bad situation worse.

"I…I'll say she was already gone, that I couldn't find her," he offered. "I…I'm so sorry, Miri. I never meant…_any_ of this."

Blue eyes, normally as clear and cool as ice, betrayed shimmering pools as they melted. Miranda's lip trembled, then firmed in anger and hurt before she cleared her throat and spoke again. "Fine," she spat. "Get out of here. Go. And I never want to see-"

There was the snap of a pistol as the Eclipse merc standing behind him suddenly fired, the human man folding without a sound. The one Miranda made, however, was not easily forgotten.

"Done," the merc smirked. "Now. Let's finish this so I can deliver the girl and get paid."

There was the ratchet of a dozen rifles as the Eclipse squad grinned and readied weapons. Miranda saw none of it…only her own wrath. With a scream she hauled back a hand wreathed in biotics, flinging it forward as if tossing a bowling ball. Flashes of power burst in rhythm along the ground before a bright explosion of energy tossed half the mercs from their feet.

Biotics or not, Miranda was leaving herself wide open. She'd knocked down half the mercs but only half, and the others were swiftly orienting guns on her. Shepard opened fire, driving the mercs behind cover, before grabbing Miranda's wrist and hauling her behind cover as well.

The battle was fierce, but short-lived. Shepard dropped the last merc, the final echoes of gunfire still hanging in the large hangar. Lowering her rifle she popped out the thermal clip, then glanced over at her companion.

Miranda was standing next to Niket's limp body. Her cheeks were dry but her eyes were gloss, her expression as unschooled as Shepard had ever seen it. Walking over, Shepard stood nearby, looking solemnly at the man as well.

"Why did you do that?" Miranda asked thickly, her voice trembling with furious grief. "Why did you _stop_ me? You should have let _me_ kill him. I could have _lived_ with that-"

"No, you couldn't," Shepard replied. "Might have seemed fine at first but it would have eaten you up inside, driven you mad. He wasn't a bad guy, Miranda. He was your friend. He just…made a mistake. He thought he was doing the right thing."

Tears trembled on the verge of spilling. Lifting a hand, Miranda crisply wiped them away, then looked at Shepard. "I…want to see Orianna," she said. "She's safe now but…I want to make sure she gets on her transport safely."

"Sure," Shepard nodded, and wordlessly the two headed back toward the main hub. Crowded from all the temporarily stranded passengers, it took Miranda a moment of searching before her face relaxed and her shoulders tightened.

"There…there she is," she murmured. Following her eyes, Shepard spotted the girl.

Though Orianna was seventeen, the resemblance to Miranda was unmistakable. There were differences, of course…even actual identical twins had _some_ small differences. She carried herself a bit more relaxed, seemed to smile easier. Her hair was shorter and lighter, but Shepard would have known they were sisters even if Miranda _hadn't_ pointed her out.

Watching her as Orianna stood and spoke with an older couple, Miranda lightly touched Shepard's arm. "We…we should go."

"Go?" Shepard blinked, then shook her head. "Oh, _fuck_ no."

Reaching into her pouch she drew out a cigar and her lighter, tucking the smoke in her mouth. Miranda frowned.

"What are you doing? We _need_ to leave. She's all right."

"_I'm_ having a smoke, thank you _ever _so," Shepard replied dryly, plucking the now lit stogie from her lips and letting out a stream of gray. "_You_ are going over there and talking to your sister."

"What? I can't…I can't _do_ that, Shepard."

"Why? Don't you want to?"

"Of course I want to, but this isn't about me. It's about _her_."

"Oh, yeah…good point. Must be a terrible fucking thing to learn you have a sister who loves and watches over you." Shepard sat down on a bench, cocking her foot up onto her knee and lifting an eyebrow as she smoked.

Miranda gaped, then scowled. As Shepard firmly pointed in Orianna's direction, Miranda's scowl turned into worry, and she half-glanced over at the girl.

_Could I do that? Could I just…_talk_ to her? _

Shepard snorted a little, ashing her cigar. "I just got shot at by a bunch of mercs for that girl, Lawson. _Someone_ is going to go over there and talk to her. Your choice if it's gonna be you…or _me_."

Shepard might have laughed at the look of sudden alarm on Miranda's face, if this all wasn't so serious. Firmly, she pointed again in Orianna's direction, her brown eyes unyielding.

Miranda looked toward Orianna again, then steeled herself. Before she could second-guess…again…she forced herself to walk toward the younger girl. Oddly enough, each step seemed a little easier than the last.

As she drew closer, Orianna and her adoptive parents caught sight of her. At first Orianna just glanced and then looked away, but it was only a moment before she glanced back, brows knitting a little.

_Probably a bit shocked to see her own face looking back at her_, Miranda thought. _Even if it is a bit older_. _God, I can't believe I'm doing this._

"I…excuse me," she managed as she stopped only a few feet away. "Orianna?"

"You…look a bit familiar," the girl replied, inclining her head a little. Unlike Miranda, Orianna's voice wasn't coated with Australian, having left their father's household long before she was able to speak.

"I'm…there's no easy way to say this," Miranda said, then laughed a little nervously. "Not…exactly how I pictured this ever happening but…Orianna, my name is Miranda. I'm…your older sister."

The parents seemed more surprised than Orianna did. Blinking and exchanging looks between each other, it was the mother that spoke first.

"The…resemblance is unmistakable but…we were told Orianna's family were all dead."

"It's…a bit complicated," Miranda admitted. "Too complicated to explain it all now. I just wanted to introduce myself, say hello. I…I'll leave you alone."

Cheeks heating, she started to turn and leave when Orianna suddenly reached out, catching hold of her hand. "No! No, stay a little bit. We still have a little while before our flight leaves. I would like to talk to you…if that's ok?"

Miranda looked down at the hand in hers, before gently squeezing it and meeting the girl's eyes. The girl she had spent so much time and energy in to keeping safe, the girl she'd sacrificed so much for. This time, when tears welled up, she felt no shame for them, and managed a smile.

"Yeah," she replied softly. "I'd like that."


	24. Chapter 24

A/N: And now….**the moment you have all been waiting for**! Again, a bit left of canon...but hopefully worth it. Enjoy!

* * *

><p>Miranda was silent on the way back to the shuttle. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she had regained some of her composure it seemed. It also seemed she was completely disinclined toward speaking, and Shepard didn't push.<p>

Hawthorne had piloted them down, and was waiting when they returned. Miranda went to speak to him as Shepard climbed in the back and sat down. Gingerly peeling off her left glove she regarded her healing hand a moment, lightly flexing it. It ached a bit but there was no numbness or swelling. Rubbing at it idly, she glanced up as Miranda entered and took her seat, the shuttle starting to power up.

"We good?" Shepard asked, eyeing the woman slightly.

"Not just yet, Shepard," Miranda replied slowly, meeting her eyes. "But we will be soon."

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked, setting her gloves aside and regarding her XO. "You seemed to be having a pleasant conversation with your sister. She didn't look upset…bit shocked, but not upset."

"She was…happy to see me," Miranda replied, as if it still surprised her. "I never thought I'd get the chance to just…sit down and talk with her. She's very smart, really funny…well-adjusted."

"Well, that's good," Shepard prodded slightly. "You gonna keep in touch with her?"

"I don't know. Probably. For once I haven't thought that far ahead. I…Shepard, I know I'm not the warmest of women and I'm hard to get along with-"

"You're fine, Miranda," Shepard replied. "You've learned to be guarded. So have I. I hardly have the right to judge someone else on their psychological eccentricities. You're smart, you do good work. Believe it or not, I _am_ glad to have you on my crew."

"No one's ever done for me what you have," Miranda murmured. "Besides Niket I've never really had any friends. All that time I spent researching you inside and out and I find I really don't know you at all. I never dreamed you'd help me but you did _more_ than that. If it weren't for you I'd never have gone up and spoken to her. She might have gone her whole life never knowing she had a sister. I…Shepard, I'm Cerberus. I'm not ashamed of it, but…"

Brows knitting, Shepard shook her head. "It's fine. We can't _all_ be perfect," she teased.

"No, it's _not_ fine," Miranda said with enough vehemence to make Shepard sit back and blink a little. "You don't understand."

"Then tell me, Miranda. Help me understand."

Miranda almost seemed to physically struggle a moment, blinking rapidly as she looked to the side, yet unable to halt her eyes dampening. Wiping at them before real tears could form and fall, she took a deep breath, then looked back at Shepard.

"That message you were sent from Dr. T'Soni was a fake," she stated as quickly and firmly as she could.

Shepard was silent, her brown eyes measuring but the emotion behind them inscrutable. When she said nothing (nor, thank God, did she reach for a weapon), Miranda continued, speaking hurriedly as if afraid she'd lose her nerve.

"I'm Cerberus. For years I've never even remotely questioned it. I still don't, not really. I know how we look to the rest of the galaxy but we _do_ have humanity's best interests in mind. The Illusive Man…I've never disagreed with his decisions, never questioned his motivations. I could always understand them, see the bigger picture. I suppose I can still see his point of view in this as well but I haven't…I _can't_ agree with it. I think he's making a mistake."

Silence.

Miranda sat back a little, rubbing her hands together as she looked at her commander under wrinkled brows. She looked like a child confessing she was the one that had broken the cookie jar, anticipating harsh punishment.

"He thought…well, we _both_ did…because of your anti-social…well, because of your _past_…your psychological profile…well, it was logical to conclude…" She sighed in frustration. "We _thought_ T'Soni was just a lark. One of those things, you know? We thought if she was around she would only distract you from the mission, and it was too important for such a distraction. But I was wrong. I saw that almost right away, realized she wasn't just some fling and I knew…I _knew_ that to keep you two apart would _be_ the distraction, that you wouldn't stop until you found her, at least made sure she was safe. I tried to explain this to him but he wouldn't listen. He insisted this would pass. That once you had some kind of closure from T'Soni's own mouth that you'd forget her, devote yourself to the mission. He's wrong, Shepard. That message he sent you was _wrong_."

When Shepard still said nothing, the tension finally got to Miranda. "_Say_ something, damn it!"

Shepard lifted a brow, her face stone. "I know the message is fake," she stated. "I knew it from the moment I watched it."

That surprised the other woman. She straightened, eyes wide. "You…knew? The whole time?"

"Yeah," Shepard replied. "I mean, give me some fucking credit, Miranda. A commissioned guitar doesn't just make itself in five minutes. It takes months, especially since there's hardly an artisan left alive that knows how to _make_ an actual stringed model. I knew just from that Liara _had_ to know I was alive for months before I even woke up. In the message she talked as if she'd just found out. Besides, _you_ meld with an asari a few times and then have someone try and pass off even a clever copy. Doesn't work."

"But…you didn't say anything."

"Of course not! Do you think I _wanted_ the Illusive Man to decide to take more drastic measures to keep us apart? Measures involving Liara and assassins?"

Her eyes reflected disbelief and horror. "He wouldn't do that-"

"Wouldn't he?" Shepard snorted. "_I'm_ not so fucking convinced. At any rate…why are you telling me this all now? Won't he be pissed you let the cat out of the bag?"

"I'm telling you because…because I believe it's the right thing to do," Miranda replied. "Because I think if you're going to get us through this mission alive, if you want even a chance at stopping the Reapers, then you need to see her, talk to her, or else half your mind is going to be on her…or are you going to tell me you _really_ stopped looking for her?"

Shepard's glare told her all she needed to know.

"That's what I thought. You're a good commander, Shepard, and you have many talents, but acting is not one of them. You were far too cheerful."

"Kasumi would argue my acting skills," Shepard retorted, referring to the recent fiasco that had been Alison Gunn's Night at Donovan Hock's Place.

"That was different. It was for survival purposes and you managed to fool someone who didn't know you. Anyone who's spent longer than a day in your company should know better. I can take you angry, Shepard. You _cheerful _scares the shit out of me."

"So you're telling me all this just because it's the right thing to do?" Shepard murmured.

"No…well, yes…yes, and no. It _is_ the right thing to do, and I hope the Illusive Man will see and understand that. But I also…words cannot express how grateful I am to you for what you did for Orianna….for me. This is the only thing I can offer as thanks, the only thing that comes even close to making up for your help."

Shepard sat forward, eyes sparking. "So you're going to tell me where Liara is?"

"No," Miranda replied even as the shuttle lowered and landed. "There's no need to tell you where she is. I've taken you to her."

* * *

><p>"I cannot help it if it is not as you thought. I have provided the facts, not your emotional speculations. <em>Facts<em>. Tefla has _no_ connection to the men who shook down your employees. I do not care how much you hate him, it remains that he was not involved in any way, not even behind the scenes."

The gold afternoon light shone brightly through two of the three floor to ceiling windows, casting halos around the tall buildings on the street below. The third window, the centermost, had been opaqued so that the strong angle of light would not interfere in the holographic image standing before her.

"No! I'm not paying for this made up bullshit," the human man shimmering there retorted. "I know Tefla was involved! He's paying you off, isn't he? He-"

Liara's sky blue eyes narrowed, but as always she felt a faint little tremor in her gut. Over the years it had gotten easier, but it never really went away. She couldn't afford to be soft, couldn't afford to back down. Her mother never would have backed down.

Shepard never backed down from a goddamn thing.

"Let me put it this way," she said as stonily as she was able. "I have contacts with several asari commandos. When I'm unhappy, _they're_ unhappy. Have you faced an asari commando unit before? Most humans haven't."

"I…I don't think that's necessary…"

"Then let me make it simple. Either you pay me, or I will flay you alive…with my _mind_."

With an irritated jab of her finger, she cut the call and the holograph faded away. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Liara closed her eyes and lowered her head.

She didn't know how much longer she could do this. She was exhausted, and not just because she had slept very little the last few nights. Her emotions had been steadily frayed over the last two years and she feared they were reaching their breaking point.

_No. I will do whatever it takes. I will not give up. _Shepard _would never give up_.

The thought of Shepard tightened her chest again, and some part inside started to weep when she realized she could actually smell the woman's cigars…like leaves in autumn, burning under an ice cold sky.

_You have to get hold of yourself, you have to get some sleep. You're losing it, T'Soni_-

She turned around and literally jolted with surprise. She fancied she felt her heart actually stop beating for a moment as she stared.

Shepard was sitting in the guest chair at her desk, boots propped up on the wood and her hands threaded behind her head as she leaned back. A freshly lit cigar was smoldering between her teeth.

It was a hallucination, a delusion, it had to be! Then the delusion moved one hand and plucked the stogie out from between its lips, a twin trail of smoke streaming from its nostrils as the boots dropped to the ground, the form sitting forward.

"Threatening to flay a man alive…kind of hard-core for you, isn't it T'Soni?" Shepard asked. It was the voice that did it, that solidified the realization that Shepard was actually _there_. Liara felt her heart restart with thunder. The name was on the tip of her tongue but she didn't seem to be able to expel the breath for it, actually speak the word. When she finally could, it escaped as little more than a gasped whisper.

"_Shepard…"_

It was impossible to say which one of them moved first. It probably didn't matter. Even as Liara rushed forward Shepard rose, dropping her cigar onto the edge of the plate Liara had used for a late lunch an hour or so before, and hadn't yet cleared away.

The overwhelming relief was so strong it was almost a physical pain as Liara surged into those arms again. The familiar smells, the familiar _warmth_, jolted her physically and threatened to completely overwhelm her a moment.

Grasping Shepard's face in her hands she kissed her desperately, her eyes heating with tears. How often had she dreamt of this since rushing to that lifeboat and seeing only Joker emerge? In her dreams, touch faded away, sensation was lost, as if she embraced a ghost, a vapor. Here, it was solid and real, each taste and sensation affirming that this was no dream. This was her Del, back and strong and _alive_.

She could almost feel the ragged edges of her soul, torn for so long, grow together and heal…before a shadow fell over everything.

…_you know what I'm telling you is the truth. You are a _distraction_. If Shepard is concerned with or distracted by you I guarantee she will not succeed against the Reapers or their agents. They are far too dangerous to risk anything but her utmost concentration. Need I remind you of the injury she sustained on Noveria? She put her back on an incredibly dangerous adversary because she thought _you_ were in danger…and she nearly got herself killed because of it. Remember Feros? She risked herself again over concern for you. And far more recently, she _died_ because of you._

_She died because of _you_._

_I am sorry, doctor. But if you care about Shepard…if you love her, then you know I am right. She is the only chance we have to stop the Reapers. Trillions of lives, billions of worlds, all rest in her hands. She cannot afford to be distracted for any reason, not if anyone is going to stand a chance against them. Shepard cares for you, I won't lie. She has a small measure of affection for you but I am not entirely sure it is to the depth that you imagine. Honestly, she hasn't even _asked _about you yet, she was more concerned with contacting the Alliance. That aside, she is extremely upset and confused. Everything in her life has been changed, torn away. Her career, her ship and crew, and now Nancy…_

_She _died_ because of you._

As the kiss broke, Liara could feel her breath almost shuddering, could feel that healing rent in her soul grow ragged once again. When Shepard whispered _that name_ in her ear, it only made it feel that much more raw.

"Tianlán…"

"H-how did you find me?" Liara whispered. Shepard drew back only a little, looking over her shoulder toward the reception area. The door was open, and through it Liara could see Miranda Lawson lingering near Nyxeris's desk, studying a painting on the wall.

"Lawson?" Liara asked in surprise. Shepard blinked at her.

"You know her?"

Internally, Liara winced. Miranda hadn't told her then, about their prior meetings and Liara's involvement in retrieving her body. Shepard didn't know she was the reason Cerberus had taken claim to her. She would hate her.

"I…yes. I…am an information broker, Shepard. I know about…about you and Cerberus…" Liara admitted. Drawing back a step, then another, she turned and retreated to safety behind her desk, trying to get her spinning head into order.

"Tianlán? What's the matter?" Shepard asked, watching her. "What's going on? How did you find out about Miranda, about Cerberus?"

"It is…it is a long and complicated story…"

Shepard folded her arms, that no-nonsense set coming to her face as she looked sternly at the asari. "I got time."

Steeling herself as best she could, doing her utmost to put on the same confident face she had adopted for her clientele, Liara forced herself to meet Shepard's eyes. "A lot has changed, Shepard. Why…_why_ are you here?"

The human woman looked at her with a baffled expression. "I'm here looking for _you_," she said. "No one would tell me where you were, if you were all right. They kept telling me you were working for the Shadow Broker, that he had you hidden-"

"I do _not_ work for the Shadow Broker!"

"I _know_, I found that out. I wanted to make sure you were all right, that you weren't in any danger or trouble."

Liara's hands were shaking. She placed them palm down on the surface of her desk to hide their motion. "I am fine, Shepard," she said firmly. "You have seen that now. I really do have a lot of work to do, as I'm sure you do as well-"

"Hold the fuck on…are you giving me the _brush-off_?" Shepard demanded. Anyone else would have seen her expression as pure anger…but no one knew her as Liara did. The asari could see the hurt beneath the façade and it nearly shattered her resolve.

"You…you have been gone for two years," Liara replied, struggling to maintain. "Things…things have changed. So much has changed-"

"Is it Feron?" Shepard asked. Liara blinked in surprise.

"You…_know_ about Feron?"

Shepard's face changed to stone and suddenly it seemed as if they were thousands of miles apart…light years away from each other once again.

"Yeah," Shepard murmured. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, Liara. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. I can see that you are. I also wanted to say that I was sorry. I never meant to cause you the pain that you've suffered. If I could take it back…I would. So…I'm sorry. I won't…I won't bother you again."

Turning, Shepard strode for the office door. Liara abruptly rose and started after her, one hand outstretched, before she forced herself to stop.

"Shepard…" she whispered, far too softly for the other woman to hear, feeling as if the woman were dying all over again right in front of her…and she had been the one to cause it. As the door slid shut, leaving her alone Liara covered her mouth, her tear-filled eyes shifting to the still burning cigar left forgotten on her lunch plate as she struggled back the sobs.

* * *

><p>Miranda glanced away from the painting, half turning toward her as Shepard strode out of the office. The expression on her face might as well have been carved from granite, and Miranda could feel her stomach sink at the sight of it.<p>

"Commander-" she began, stepping forward, only to jerk to a halt as venom-filled dark eyes snapped to her.

"Don't you _fucking_ come near me, Lawson," Shepard snarled, her tone ice-cold murder.

As she strode off down the stairs Miranda stared after her, then looked toward the office door.

_No, this is wrong. This is…this is all __**wrong**_.

Walking into the office without bothering to knock, Miranda frowned toward the asari woman who stood with her back to her. "What was that all about?" she demanded.

Liara half-turned toward her, tearful misery on her face. "Why did you bring her here?" she asked. "Why torture us both?"

"_Torture_?" Miranda snapped, folding her arms. "I brought her here because she hasn't stopped looking for _you_ since the moment she opened her eyes. I brought her here because she _loves_ you. Just what did you say to her?"

"I cannot…you cannot _do_ this to me, Miranda," Liara said, her voice trembling with a mix of grief and anger. "To…to _us_. I cannot watch her die again because of me-"

"Because of _you_?" Miranda gaped.

"I am a distraction! If it had not been for me delaying her in Armament on the _Normandy_, she could have gotten to Joker sooner, could have gotten out in time. But she didn't, because she was worried about _me_. She is…she is better without me. The work she must do is far too important. She has to save Nan, her people…stop the Reapers, defend an entire galaxy! Who am I to interfere with that?"

"_That's_ the Illusive Man talking," Miranda replied sternly. For the first time in her life, she felt genuine fury at her boss and the pain he was causing.

Liara's face tightened and she shook her head. "Truth is truth. She has her galaxy to save. And I…if I do _nothing_ else, I will stop the Shadow Broker. I will make him pay for what he did to her, and to Feron…to so many others. Shepard _understands_ that-"

"What? No she doesn't."

"Of course she does! Shepard would go to any length to help someone in trouble. She understands why I have to help Feron."

"She doesn't even know who Feron _is_, Liara."

"Yes, she does! She brought up his name, not a moment before she walked out that door-"

"Because that's _all_ she knows! A _name_, and the fact he's a drell. For pity's sake, doctor! She thinks you're in _love_ with him."

Liara paled, one hand drifting down to steady herself against the desk. "_What_?"

"She thinks you're in love with him," Miranda repeated. "She doesn't know what you did to bring her back, doesn't know how you were involved, or anything about how Feron helped you. She thinks he's just someone you met after she died, someone you fell in love with."

"Goddess," Liara gasped. Swallowing she looked up at the human woman again. "Why…why are you telling me all this? Why…why does any of this matter to you?"

"Because Shepard doesn't _deserve_ this," Miranda replied, taking even herself by surprise. Sighing wearily, she shook her head. "When all this began, it was just another job, a project. I put my all into it because that's what I do, but that's all it was. Shepard was just a tool to be repaired, a weapon to be aimed, something to be used to stop the threat to humanity and the galaxy. But I've seen her since she first woke up, Liara. I've watched her, fought beside her."

She shook her head. "The things she's gone through in the short amount of time she's been awake…it's unbelievable. The sacrifices she's willing to make, the pain she's willing to tolerate and the lengths she'll go to are…_inhuman_. I've watched her suffer, but she endures it and pushes on because she _knows_ she's fighting for something greater than herself. I gave her no reason to like me. Hell, I represent Cerberus and I don't need to tell you how she feels about the organization. She considers us all terrorists. But even so, when I _needed_ her…desperately needed her…she was there."

Her jaw tightening, she shook her head again. "With all that she suffers and sacrifices, Liara, she's got _one _happiness. And it isn't getting drunk, it isn't smoking or playing the guitar or beating batarians to a pulp. It's _you_. And losing you _will_ destroy her, I guarantee it. You are not a distraction, you are the _only_ _thing_ that is holding that woman together."

"I…" Liara wiped at her streaming cheeks with shaking fingers. "I want to believe you, Miranda…I do, but…"

"Then _don't_ believe me," Miranda urged. "Believe _her_. I will tell her everything I know. How you fought to get her body back, why you gave her to us, Feron, everything. I will tell her the Illusive Man lied to you as much as he lied to _her_. You _know_ the moment that Shepard finds out what you're trying to do, that you're trying to stop the Shadow Broker and rescue Feron, she will do _everything_ she can to help you. _Let_ her. If any of us are ever going to have a chance, we _need_ her…so _you_ need to _let_ her."

* * *

><p>Shepard didn't wait for Miranda, but ordered Hawthorne to take her back to the <em>Normandy<em>. Even had she not been his commanding officer, seeing the look on her face made him fearful for his life, and he didn't offer the slightest sound of protest.

Once she was back on board, he departed down to the surface again to retrieve the XO. As Miranda stepped into the cargo bay Jacob moved in, concern on his face.

"What the hell happened down there, Miranda," he asked. "Your sister ok?"

"She's fine," she said. "I…can't really talk about it right now. Where did Shepard go?"

"Her room, I think," he said. "She looked…it wasn't pretty. What happened?"

"Later," she promised, and stepped into the lift. She didn't head immediately up for the Nest but instead returned to her own office, lighting her consoles and pinging her contacts in Intelligence.

"I want everything we have on the Shadow Broker," she demanded. "Scour our entire network if you have to. I want every intercepted communication, every hint of a location, known double-agents, _everything_."

_{This is a large and rather unusual request,}_ Intel replied back. _{Has it been cleared?}_

"I'm clearing it, damn it. Now _do it_."

Knowing it would take a few hours, at the very least, Miranda headed back for the lift, this time selecting the Crow's Nest. There was no telling what state Shepard would be in, but she was determined to make this right.

* * *

><p>Draped over her knees, her newly-healed hand was already darkening with bruises over the split knuckles, blood having run down her fingers. She didn't think she'd actually broken any bones slamming her fist over and over again into the metal wall, but it didn't matter. The pain was hot and real, and it was something else to feel besides misery.<p>

Shepard sat on the floor beside her bed, her good hand covering her eyes as she sobbed in rapid, grit-toothed exhalations of breath. Every moment of pain in her entire life seemed to have moved its way into her throat, threatening to choke her.

Walking in to that office, seeing her Tianlán standing there, Shepard had felt like her life had finally come together again. The _Normandy_, two years gone, Cerberus, the flashbacks, tearing her hand apart…none of that mattered. She had _found_ her, found the only peace, the only color that existed in the gray of her life.

She had found her Sky Blue.

So long as Liara was safe, so long as she was happy, Shepard could conquer anything, endure anything, defeat all the galaxy had to throw at her.

Or so she had thought.

Liara was safe. She was happy with another love. So why was the galaxy just gray again? Why did Shepard feel nothing but weak, helpless, consumed with nothing but mindless grief?

She heard her door call sound but ignored it. She didn't care who it was or what they wanted.

A moment later she heard the door open, footsteps. There was a pause as her unwanted guest no doubt looked around, thinking the room empty at first. Shepard made no move to draw attention to herself or reveal her location. Maybe they'd just go away.

They didn't. She was seen, and the footsteps headed her way before stopping. Someone eased down to sit beside her.

Shepard remained as she sat, face-down with her arms draped around her knees.

_It's probably Kelly, or Miranda_, she thought tiredly. The actual tears had stopped but her head hurt, her entire face felt stopped up.

"She's not in love with Feron," the voice that rose a moment later confirmed the newcomer's identity.

When Shepard said nothing, Miranda continued.

"When you died we moved immediately to try and retrieve your body. Agents of the Shadow Broker reached it first, as I've told you. They intended to sell you to the Collectors. The deal very nearly went down but it wasn't stopped by me or Jacob or anyone else with Cerberus. It was stopped by Liara…with the help of a drell named Feron."

Miranda leaned her head back on the mattress, looking up toward the ceiling as she spoke. "He was a double-agent. Working for us and for the Broker. There were…entanglements, misunderstandings. Details aren't important, really. In the end, he sacrificed himself so that Liara could save you. The Shadow Broker's agents captured him, and given the level of fury the Broker had at his deal being thwarted, I doubt he had any kindness waiting for Feron.

"We couldn't have retrieved you without them. In the end, Liara gave you to us, _knowing_ that you might wake up hating her for it…just on the off-chance that we _could_ bring you back. And ever since then, she's spent her every waking moment following _your_ example."

Shepard finally lifted her head a little, turning it enough to look at Miranda out of the corner of her red-rimmed eye. "My example?" she asked, her voice muffled still by her arms and knees.

Miranda lifted her head and looked at her. "Shepard, what would you do if a friend of yours was in trouble? Especially if they'd gotten themselves in trouble to protect _you_? You'd move heaven and earth to make it right, to get them back. I know. I've seen it. You knew Kasumi Goto two days and you were risking your life so she could get back _memories_ of a murdered man that she loved. You had absolutely no reason to help me but you _did_, you fought mercs to help make sure my sister was safe. And Liara's seen more than I have. Chasing after Saren, never giving up no matter what fire was thrown your way…even when no one would help, no one would believe you.

"The Shadow Broker was going to steal you away, turn your body over to the Collectors. He took her friend…she doesn't even know if he's still alive, but she keeps trying, keeps fighting because it's all she has to cling too, and because you taught her to never give up."

"So this is what?" Shepard asked wearily. "A pep talk? Never give up, Shep…you'll get over it, you're a hero?"

"No, this is me making sure you _don't_ make the biggest mistake of your life. That girl loves you, Shepard. And _you_ love _her_. Right now she's telling herself that you're better off without her, that you won't be able to do what you need to do if she's in your way. She's terrified that you'll die again because of her."

"It wasn't _because_ of her!"

"I know that, and so do you, but she thinks it _is_. Or did you think the Illusive Man was only working _one_ half of the equation in keeping the two of you apart?"

When Shepard' s eyes narrowed angrily Miranda shook her head. "It was a mistake, Shepard. A cruel one, but one made for the best of reasons. He was wrong, I won't argue that…but he made that mistake for the greater good, or so he sees it. You two are going to prove him wrong, and when you do, he'll be the first to admit that mistake, but right now what's done isn't important. It's what needs _doing_.

"I'm not saying that two years of pain and loss and grieving are just going to vanish," she concluded. "I'm not saying this is going to be some fairytale romantic ending, that when all this is over you two aren't going to just go your separate ways. But I saw that kiss. _That_ was love. The look on her face when she realized you were there, the way _you_ looked at _her_…_that_ was love. And that deserves a chance."

Getting to her feet, Miranda looked down at the commander, before offering her hand. "At the very least, she needs your _help_, Shepard. I and this crew, we are at your command. So let's go and _help_ her."


	25. Chapter 25

A/N: Do NOT ask me where this first scene came from. Fuck if I know.

* * *

><p>Shepard ran through the pouring rain, tangles of twigs and branches etched against the sky with every flash of lightning, creaking and moaning with every howl of wind.<p>

Distance. Her first priority was _distance_.

_You run too far and too fast and you'll be winded, too exhausted to fight. That's the trap Hawkins fell into. _

Half sliding down a muddy slope, Shepard's boots crashed into the low stream bed. Water sprayed in sheets as she sprinted up the creek, finally pausing beside an overhang to catch her breath. She was completely drenched. Her short black hair clung to her temples and cheeks, her fatigues soaked through.

She had no weapon, no compass, no omni-tool, no armor. Nothing but her clothes and her own wits. Wiping hair and rainwater from her face she looked upward. There was no telling how much time had already passed. She could feel it slipping away from her like sand through her fingers.

_Stop and think. Remember your training. Hawkins winded himself on a flat sprint for the shuttle and didn't make it two thirds of the way. You're better than Hawkins_.

A bright flash of lightning lit the stream bed like noonday a moment, before it died away. The rumbling growl of thunder that followed almost immediately sounded like a living beast on the hunt.

_Kesterson made the mistake of trying to circle, take Rasler from behind, eliminate the threat directly. Kesterson fell. You are _**better**_ than Kesterson_.

The stream was running north to south, she remembered from the map. Unable to see sky or sun, it was her only orientation on direction. The grotto was north-east of here, another few miles. The shuttle would be waiting. Not daring to linger any further, Shepard bolted from her momentary hiding spot and clambered up the slope for the woods once again.

_You are leaving_ tracks, _Shepard_, Rasler's voice echoed through her head. _Do the world a favor and paste a goddamn neon arrow over your head instead!_

_Shut the fuck up, Rasler! Your shit don't sparkle!_

Shepard couldn't help the feral grin that spread over her face at that memory. It had earned her a black eye…and a whiskey. That whiskey was fucking _golden_.

_Two years and Rasler has never failed to take down her target. I am _**better**_ than Rasler_.

That affirmation was a bit harder to convince herself of. She _was_ better than Kesterson and Hawkins. Her scores were top of her class, she left the both of them in the dust, time and time again. Kesterson might actually make N7 by the narrowest of margins but she didn't hold out much hope for Hawkins. Rasler, however…that was another story. Rasler was fucking ice and stone. Rasler was better than good. Rasler was a goddamn _legend_.

Shepard knew she would make N7. It was all but guaran-fucking-teed…but that wasn't good enough. She was going to make it to that _shuttle_, goddamnit. She was going to be the fucking _first_.

The lightning had started to die down but the rain continued to pour as Shepard stopped for breath again. By her estimates, she was less than half a mile from the grotto…and the shuttle. So far there hadn't been a single goddamn sign of Rasler. Pressing herself against a tree, Shepard took stock.

_Ok, think. The heavy rain is going to wash away most of your trail but Rasler's a fucking bloodhound, even without her gear. Besides, she doesn't have to find your path…she knows where you're going. If she was smart…and Rasler is_ fucking _smart…she'd completely ignore tracking you directly and simply go directly to the shuttle, make herself a snug little hiding spot, and peg you right between the goddamn eyes the moment you show your face._

Looking around the tree, she surveyed the landscape a moment, before she started working her way carefully away from the shuttle and up along a high rocky ridge. Split and cracked from an earthquake years ago, the ridge was ragged and lanced with gaps and holes. Fingers scratched and bleeding, she eased her way over the sharp edge and down a bit, before slipping into one of those gaps. It was a tight fit, but her years of crawling through vents were not so far away, and Shepard slithered within with deceptive ease.

Remaining still and cramped back as deep in the dark as she could, she waited for a long while, slowly counting off the time to herself. If Rasler had spotted her along the ridge, or happened to see her slip over the rocks, she might deduce her hiding spot. Shepard didn't want to give it away.

Half an hour crawled past while Shepard counted. The rain started to slack from deluge to drizzle, and the cold wind trying to claw her out of her hiding spot whispered away to find new prey. Shepard was still soaked, unbelievably cold, and the rock leaching her heat from her was not helping. Finally she dared inch forward, peering carefully out of the hole.

From this vantage she could see down into the grotto. Clear of vegetation for at least fifty yards around, she could see the waiting shuttle. There was no cover between it and the tree-line. Anyone watching over the area would have a clear line of sight for anyone trying to make it to the vehicle. Hell, if Shepard had her sniper on her right now, she could have pegged a mouse trying to scamper over the bare dirt.

Outside of this no-man's land were rocks dripping with ferns, lichen, and slippery moss. They formed broken ranks on all ends, rising up to the very ridge where Shepard was now ensconced. Tall, old pine trees, most naked of branches save for their very tops, leaned like drunken old men among the stones.

"_That fucking bitch_," Shepard whispered to herself as she glared. Just as she'd thought, Rasler was not hiding, not lurking. She sat only a yard or two away from the door of the shuttle itself, rifle at hand, a comfortable fire burning not a foot away.

_Keep it smart, keep it simple. Complicated strategies only means more things can go wrong. Make use of all tools at your command at all times. Your environment, your body, and most of all, your goddamn brain. There is no survival of the strongest, just survival of the smartest. Be smart and you won't lose._

Rasler was being smart, planting herself exactly where she knew Shepard was obliged to go. She knew her opponent was unarmed, wet, exhausted, and cold. Rasler had no armor on but she did have a shield generator clipped to her belt. Shepard could see it. Even crude weapons forged from what was on hand in the woods would have bounced harmlessly off of them.

Rasler had a fire, proof against the elements. She had her back covered with the shuttle. She had clear line of sight all around. Shepard could not make it across that open ground from any direction without Rasler having plenty of time to peg her.

_Use all tools at your command. Be smart and you won't lose._

Shepard began to grin.

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes later a heavy rattle of rock suddenly cascaded down from the ridge, drawing Rasler's gaze. The woman stood up, rifle ready. She didn't make the mistake of fixing her eyes to the miniature landslide, knowing full well it could be a distraction. Her stern amber eyes swept the entire clearing, but snapped back to the ridge as she heard a grunting wail of pain.<p>

_That_ was no distraction, no faked cry. Shepard wasn't that good an actress and Rasler's ears were as good as her eyes. Real pain was in that sound.

Rifle to her shoulder and ready, she moved forward toward the base of the ridge, climbing over broken rock with all the ease of a mountain goat, never once lowering her weapon. She spotted Shepard almost immediately, the girl collapsed on the ground in a half-sit, cradling a badly bleeding arm against her chest. Her teeth were grit as she glared at Rasler, and the older girl could see bone jutting out of a gash on Shepard's forearm.

"Fuck," Shepard spat as Rasler lifted her brows, lowering her rifle.

"Slip?" she asked with a chuckle and a head-shake.

"_Fuck you_," Shepard snorted. "Goddamn rocks were wet. I was goddamn close!"

"Yeah," Rasler smirked. "You're not the first grunt that got a bone shattered trying for my shuttle."

Setting her weapon aside she reached for her ear bud. "Base this is Specialist Rasler. I need a medical evac team to-"

She barked, a boot crashing hard into her gut even as Shepard snatched hold of the rifle with her good hand. Not expecting the blow, Rasler's foot slipped on the slick rock and she crashed back to the ground with enough force to make her see stars a moment.

Bam. Bam.

The rifle ignited twice, its bark punctuating the pair of bruising slaps that whipped into Rasler's chest. Coughing, she looked down in surprise at the bright green paint splatters, one perfectly over her heart, before she gaped up at Shepard's taut grin.

Without a word Shepard stepped past Rasler and trotted for the shuttle, casting aside the paint rifle halfway there. Triumphantly she slapped the door release with her good hand, and as the shuttle opened she cast a shit-eating grin over at Rasler, who had managed to get to her feet.

"You broke your _own arm_? On _purpose_?" Rasler demanded as she strode over, picking up her rifle on the way.

Shepard shrugged. "Use all tools at your disposal, survive at all costs. I knew I wasn't getting past without drawing your attention so…I drew your attention."

Rasler smirked. "And what's a broken bone compared to your life, right? Not bad, _Delilah_. Not fucking bad at all."

"Why, thank you _Sydney_," Shepard shot back with a grin. "Now, can we get back to base before I fucking bleed to death?"

* * *

><p><em>Normandy, Current<em>

The stars shone steadily above her as Shepard lay back on her bed in the Nest, looking upward through the observation portal. Normally she kept the shutters closed. The 'skylight' was a structural weakness that never would have flown on an actual military vessel, but there were times that she liked to just lay there and look out, find some measure of peace in the abyss that had once claimed her.

Idly she realized she was rubbing her left arm, where she'd broken it all those years ago. There was no scar, of course. Even if one had been left, her regeneration with Lazarus would have erased it as it had the others. Though it had been a long time she could almost still feel the rain-slicked rock as she wedged her hand and wrist between two heavy stones. She could almost feel the sharp, white-hot crack as she then threw her entire body weight to the side, forcing her trapped arm at such a sudden and violent angle she'd instantly snapped her ulna, tearing it through the skin.

What was a broken arm compared to death, after all? If Sydney had been an actual enemy, sporting actual bullets instead of paintballs, a broken arm was small in comparison to death.

Of course, if she'd been an _actual_ enemy she would have shot the wounded Shepard in the head rather than call for a shuttle evac, a fact she pointed out only half a day after the incident occurred. Shepard then pointed out that's what she should have done then. Wound or no wound, she should have pegged Shepard and _then_ called for the shuttle evac.

Sydney had reluctantly conceded that point, and the first victory claimed over her in two years of teaching survival courses to N7 candidates.

"_You are also dissembling," Kelly pointed out, taking a sip of her own drink. "Trying to distract me from the question I asked…which you still have not answered. Was there anyone else that you had a romantic connection to, prior to meeting Dr. T'Soni?"_

_Shepard glowered a little, stumping her spent cigar out a bit more firmly than necessary in the tray. "No," she said. _

"_You're lying."_

Hand dropping away from her arm it shifted to scritch Rat behind the ears, the rodent curled up and half-dozing on her stomach.

Struggle as she might against them, thoughts of Liara kept returning, their last conversation running over and over again in her head, mingling with that unanswered question Kelly had asked, until everything was simple confused chaos. She wished it would all just shut up and go away.

_{Shepard, we have something,}_ Miranda's voice suddenly broke through on the comm. Scooping Rat up Shepard got to her feet, slipping the animal back into her habitat.

"Go."

_{Downloading intel directly to your terminal now.}_

Accessing the file downloads, watching them scroll past, Shepard simultaneously pulled up communications, not allowing herself to hesitate as she connected to Liara's office.

* * *

><p>The asari's eyes fixed to the ident of the call coming in, measuring silently for a moment. More than one emotion showed in their depths before they closed.<p>

A beat. A breath. They opened again, and Liara rose from her chair, accessing the call and transferring it to her wall screen.

"Shepard," she greeted as neutrally as she could, blue eyes meeting brown as the human woman appeared.

"Liara." Shepard's response sounded just as neutral, her expression distant and stoic. Liara touched her fingertips to her desk, doing her best to look every inch the professional. It was not easy when every cell of her body wanted to weep, to both beg forgiveness and to grant it.

"It is…good to see you again," Liara managed. "I am sorry our last meeting did not end on the best note."

"Li, Miranda told me the truth…about Feron. About what you did to retrieve my remains."

Here it came. The fury, the accusations. _How could you, Liara? How could you turn me over to terrorists to experiment with like some kind of lab animal? I was better off dead!_

"Shepard, I am…I am sorry, I…I knew how you felt about Cerberus-"

Shepard shook her head lightly. "It's…not important right now, Li. What's important is your friend. Miranda pulled all intel Cerberus has access to regarding the Shadow Broker. It's slim but we found something that may help you to find him. Open a link and I'll upload all the files to you now."

"Y-yes," Liara responded, taken aback. Glancing at her console, her fingers fumbled over the commands as she opened the link. "I am ready on this end."

"Files uploading now," Shepard affirmed, and moments later information began to scroll over Liara's desk screen. Sifting over it, she could feel her heart speed again.

"There…it looks like some leaked communications data between Shadow Broker agents. There are some actual hints here as to location and…and Feron's name! It's about Feron! He's…by the Goddess, I think he's _still alive_…"

Looking back up at Shepard her eyes were gloss. "I think this may be exactly what I need, Shepard. I…I cannot believe…I need to cross-reference this with my intelligence network, see if I can't connect a few dots, get a solid location. I think I can…no, no, I am _sure_ I can finally locate the Broker's main base with these pieces, it is only a matter of time."

"What do you need from me?" Shepard asked.

"Shepard, this is already so much-"

"No," Shepard said sternly. "We're at your disposal, Liara. Me, the _Normandy_, anything you need. Your friend isn't staying in the Broker's hands a second longer. This isn't a fucking _option_. Now. What do you need from me?"

That familiar conviction in her voice, that take-no-argument tone…that was what Liara had never been able to truly mimic or perfect in her two years of trying. Hearing it now brought an ache to her chest, heat to her eyes.

_By the Goddess, Shepard…how much I have missed you…_

"Y-yes," she conceded softly. "All right. I have to go over this in more detail, put a plan together, follow this trail but…w-why don't you come by later tonight? You can come to my apartment. I will show you what I have come up with and we can form a solid plan…a-all right?"

Shepard nodded. "Send me your address. I'll be there."

"Thank you, Shepard, I…th-thank you," she murmured, sending the address back to the Normandy. "I…I will see you tonight."

She cut the call before she could lose her composure altogether. Transferring the files to an OSD she slipped it in her pocket and quickly gathered her things. She would have to call Sekat. He was the one who would most likely be able to extrapolate a location from this information and their previous findings. He would also be the fastest.

Things gathered, she last touched the collar of her shirt, unconsciously feeling the comforting sensation of metal beneath it against her skin…a habit she had developed over the last two years. The motion helped to center her, and a moment later, she was gone.

* * *

><p>Shepard took the <em>Normandy<em>'s shuttle down, but she asked them to drop her off three blocks away, and walked the remaining distance. Most of the way she argued that she wasn't _actually_ procrastinating, but she felt she needed the extra few minutes to her head straight, get herself convicted.

_This is all business. You're helping her out, that's all. Get the job done. That's what you do, Shepard. Keep it professional. _

Even here on Ilium, a world that liked to pretend they were more civil and sophisticated than a place like Omega, an armed human woman walking down an avenue barely drew a glance from passers-by. And she _was_ armed. Marines were always armed, even when they called on old friends for business meetings.

Still, her machine pistols and her obligatory knife-in-the-boot were all she brought. She wasn't wearing a hard-suit or armor of any kind, but rather a pair of cargo pants, a loose gray t-shirt, and a corduroy jacket in army green. Nan's cross, rather awkwardly beaten back into a shape somewhat resembling its original, glimmered on her chest.

She hadn't brought her swagman this time but she did have her smokes. She did her best not to reach for one as she spotted Liara's building. She had the penthouse on the top floor.

When the lift doors parted and her brown eyes landed on the security line and the Blue Shirt standing just outside the open penthouse door, Shepard felt a sudden surge of adrenaline, a burst of actual fear tightening her chest. The sensation was far more than she ever would have expected, and she forced herself not to run, instead breaking into a fast walk as she strode up to the cop.

He was not, technically, a Blue Shirt…this being several light years from Earth and New York…but in Shepard's mind all cops were Blue Shirts, nonetheless. Even Garrus, a C-Sec agent, had been filed in her mind as a Blue Shirt at first.

Seeing her coming, the cop lifted his hand. "This is a restricted area."

"Restricted my mother-fucking _ass_," Shepard barked. "This is Dr. T'Soni's apartment. Where is she?"

"Ma'am, calm down," he retorted, laying his hand on the pistol on his hip.

"I'm a Spectre, you _chun_, and this _is_ calm!" she snarled back. "Believe me, you don't want to see me _not_ calm! Where's Liara? And don't even think about lifting that gun in my direction or I will _drop you like math_, dong ma?"

The turian looked over the human woman skeptically. "_You're_ a Spectre," he scoffed. What little patience she had vanished, and Shepard headed for the door. Blinking, the turian foolishly tried to get in her way, lifting a hand toward her chest to halt her.

"You can't-"

A breath later he was flying through the door and into the apartment, slamming to the ground and tumbling to a halt. Three other security officers within spun around, drawing weapons and fixing them on the human civvie that strode in after him, as roiling and dark as a thundercloud.

"Hey! Stop right there! Who are-" one barked, only to be interrupted by a voice from the stairs.

"Officer Darkel, that's enough. Stand down. She's a Spectre."

Reluctantly the cops reshipped their weapons as Shepard's eyes fixed to the armored asari moving down from the apartment's upper level. She had the natural grace all asari possessed but her movements were the precise, confident motions of a militarian.

"Who the fuck are you?" Shepard asked hotly.

"My name is Tela Vasir," she replied evenly. "Special Tactics and Recon."

"You're a Spectre?"

"Just like you, Commander Shepard," the asari replied as she reached the ground floor. "Though not nearly as famous, I daresay. Nor as _dead_."

"Where's Liara? What's going on?"

"I don't know where she is. I'm trying to figure that out," Tela replied honestly. "Someone tried to kill your friend about an hour ago. Hence the bullet holes in the windows."

She gestured at the large picture windows nearby. Made of thick reinforced glass they still bore the unmistakable impact of gunfire.

"She was spotted leaving the building four minutes later…quite a gap considering someone is apparently trying to kill her," Tela added. "She did not seem to be wounded but was in an awful hurry. We need to figure out where she was going. The assassin may still be after her. Do you know any reason why someone would want her eliminated?"

"She had some intel on the Shadow Broker…his agents, maybe?"

Shepard was scrutinizing the holes in the glass, the patterns of the cracks they'd left behind. It was high-caliber sniper fire…apparently directed from the roof of a building nearby.

_Someone tried to kill Liara. They could be on her tail_ **_right now_**.

"She knew I was coming here," Shepard said sternly, glaring at Tela. "You say she was spotted leaving four minutes after the gunshots? She would have left me a message, some kind of hint as to where she was going."

"We haven't been able to find a thing," Tela responded. "But please, look around. I'll clear security out. Not much they can do that we can't, anyway."

As Tela walked off Shepard planted her hands on her hips, closing her eyes a moment as she tried to center herself. All she could think of was that someone had tried to hurt Liara, was probably _still_ trying to hurt her, right now.

_Mind here, mind now, Shepard_, she growled internally. _Liara's smart, and she's been in hairy spots before. She's fought combat right beside you. She's no helpless, shrinking violet…far from. If you let fear cripple you, you'll be of no help to her at all._

A smaller, more timid voice only whispered that she couldn't lose her Tianlán. Not again, and definitely not like this.

Opening her eyes she looked around, trying to put herself into Liara's shoes. She'd want to leave a message but she wouldn't want the assassin to be able to find it, to know what her next move was.

The apartment was decorated somewhat spartanly but with excellent taste. Relics from her digs and various artistic items were sealed in their own air-tight cases, tasteful paintings adorning the walls. The living and dining areas and kitchen were on the lower level, a bedroom and private study on the upper. Figuring upstairs in a private area would be more a more likely spot for her to hide a message, Shepard started that direction, only to pause as one of the cases caught her eye.

Changing her trajectory she walked over to it, her brown eyes solemnly falling on what lay within. In the glass, she saw the reflection of Tela as the other woman approached.

"Most of these other pieces are Prothean relics," the asari woman commented. "This is…strange. What is it?"

"Part of my hard-suit," Shepard murmured.

But no…that wasn't exactly right. It wasn't just part of her hard-suit…it was part of _the_ hard-suit. Only in spots was it recognizable as half of a chest-plate. It had clearly been horribly burned, half melted. She could see sharp lines where it had been cut by a laser saw.

_This is the hard-suit I died in_, she thought, feeling cold. _Those cuts…that was Miranda sawing it off of my ruined body. And then…what? She hosed it off and sent it to Liara as some kind of…of twisted momento?_

"Wow," Tela shook her head. "Someone really hated you, didn't they?"

Frowning, a thought niggling, Shepard crouched and began to run her fingers carefully over the display's pedestal. Catching sight of the tiniest shred of neurowire in the crease between the stand and the case itself, she narrowed her eyes.

_Not DNA activated…she wouldn't have a sample to use to set it. Same for fingerprint…voice, perhaps? Plausible, if she had a long enough recording of my voice, but there would be a password. What would the password be…?_

"See something?" Tela asked, but Shepard barely heard her, brows knitting as she ran her fingers over her lips a moment, then spoke.

"Tianlán."

There was a click, and a hidden compartment in the stand slid outward. Within was an OSD.

"Good, nice," Tela nodded, then pointed. "Her console's over here."

Shepard plucked out the OSD, heading to Liara's desk and sliding it into the drive. The directory pulled up and she squinted at it.

"Looks like a call log," she murmured, even as she selected the call.

As with the logs she had gotten from Nan's home on Freedom's Progress, the call only displayed one side of the conversation visually, but had recorded both sides auditorily. Liara was speaking to a salarian she addressed as Sekat. He informed her he had extrapolated the location information she needed and she replied that she would meet him at his office in the Dracon Trade Center. As the call ended, Shepard slipped the OSD out.

"The Trade Center is not too far from here," Tela said as both women simultaneously turned and headed for the door. "My car is on the roof. Let's go."

Shepard powered on her omni-tool as they broke into a jog, punching in the comm info for the _Normandy_ and touching her ear bud. "Joker, this is Shepard."

_{Shepard this is Normandy,}_ Joker replied as they hit the stairs and started up. _{Got you loud and clear.}_

"Someone took a shot at Liara," she reported. "I'm with another Spectre, we're heading for the Dracon Trade Center right now. I need Lawson and Goto on the ground there pronto, and tell them to bring me a goddamn hard-suit. I'm in civvies and have nothing but my charming smile between me and fuck-knows-what."

_{Roger that, Commander.}_

"Your ship docked?" Tela asked as they climbed into her skycar.

"Orbit," Shepard replied, strapping in.

"Gonna take them nearly fifteen to get a shuttle on the ground then. We'll be at the Trade Center in just over five."

She gunned the engine, the car lifting into the air.

* * *

><p>The Trade Center was ten stories of gleaming commercial perfection, flanking two sides of a large plaza deep in the city's most elite neighborhoods. Dark had fully fallen as the skycar descended and landed in the plaza, Shepard out of it almost before it had touched ground.<p>

"That salarian's offices are on the third floor," Tela said, checking her omni-tool as the two women headed toward the front doors. "I'm not getting any police reports abou-"

An invisible hand seemed to reach down and slap into them, swatting them off their feet and into the air as easily as a human might swat away a fly. The sound came a breath later, a slam of concussive noise so loud Shepard felt as if the sides of her skull had been crushed inward by the force.

She hit the ground hard, and with no armor to even remotely cushion the blow, took the full impact across the back of her shoulders. Pain rocketed through her spine and up through her skull, air evacuated, and for the briefest of moments, the world around her seemed to vanish in a flash of white.

As it snapped back into being, an agonizing breath drawing back into her lungs, Shepard struggled to push herself into a sit. Not a single soul who had been standing in the plaza was on their feet, everyone having been knocked flat. A few, like her, were dazedly recovering but the majority were still down.

Debris was scattered everywhere, some of it on fire. Great gluts of black smoke were belching out of the side of the trade center, but even through them, Shepard could see that three whole levels had been devastated by the explosion.

Still trying to steady her breathing, she coughed raggedly, gasping in the first real breath she'd been able to manage, even as the sight sank in and registered on her mind.

"No!" she rasped, and took a staggering step forward. A hand grasped at her arm and she swung around, slamming her fist into the shoulder pad of Tela's hard-suit, even as she tore her arm loose.

"Let go of me!" she snarled. _"Liara's in there!"_

She ran toward the smoke, weaving through the devastation, barely hearing Tela call after her. "I'll take the car to the roof! Work my way down from the top!"

Nearly tripping over what could have been anything from a chunk of debris to an injured civilian, Shepard didn't so much as slow.

"_Liara!"_

Bolting into the lobby, she looked around quickly. Everything was dark, debris and ruin everywhere, water pouring down from the fire-suppression systems. She heard it rumbling against her jacket and quickly peeled the heavy garment off, tossing it aside. It would only weigh her down as it got soaked, and could be used to tangle her up. Ripping her pistol off her hip she spotted the staircase and took off in that direction.

_{Shepard? Shepard, what happened?}_ Miranda's voice suddenly barked in her ear, alarmed. The blast would have been seen for miles, and the nearing shuttle apparently hadn't missed it.

"Someone bombed the Trade Center!" Shepard shouted back, taking the steps two at a time, ignoring the firebrand of pain in her back and shoulders, ignoring the cold of the water soaking into her clothes. "Took out three floors trying to get to Liara!"

_{We'll be on the ground in two minutes, Shepard…where are you?}_

"Second floor!" Shepard barked as she hit the landing and turned the corner.

_{You're in the building! Shepard, there could be mercenaries, assassins…you don't even have your hard-su-}_

She cut off as Shepard slapped the ear bud off, making her ear ring all over again with the motion. She continued upward, nearly bowling over a pair of shell-shocked survivors who were hurrying their way downward. Skipping to keep her feet, she stumbled past them and pushed on, moments later bursting out into the third floor. Pistol up, she slapped her omni-tool on against her knee before lifting that hand to the butt of her weapon as well, gripping it. The omni-light cut through the heavy smoke and gloom, fixing on the same spot any shot fired from her weapon would land. She quickly cleared her corners, the light playing over fire-melted furniture, ruined decorations, shattered walls.

Water streamed down her face from the relentless artificial rain. Trying to pinpoint the direction the salarian's office was, Shepard turned to her right.

Gunfire bloomed out of the dark, the snap and drone of bullets hissing through the air only inches from her head. Darting down behind a half-collapsed partition, Shepard grit her teeth, then slapped her ear-bud back on.

"_Vasir! I'm taking heavy fire!"_

_{Say 'hi' to the Shadow Broker's private army,}_ Vasir replied bitterly. _{Upper floors are crawling with them. Your friend really pissed him off, didn't she?}_

"_Fuck,"_ Shepard growled, and slapped off her omni-light again so as not to provide an obvious target. Inching along in a crouch, she reached the edge of the partition, listening closely to the gunfire. The same breath there was a lull, she swung out and raked the far end of the room with her own barrage. The machine pistol chewed through wood and debris, and she heard more than one cry of pain as shots hit armor or flesh. She ducked back again as the Broker mercs rained down hell once again, though this time their deluge seemed slightly lighter than before.

_Li, I'm coming_, Shepard grimaced, listening for another lull. _I don't care if I have to throttle every one of these goddamn mercs with my bare fucking hands. I'm coming._


	26. Chapter 26

A/N: Again, a slight tap-dance away from canon. To those of you who hate cliffhangers, please please _**please **_don't kill me. Especially since you have to wait until Monday for this to continue :D

* * *

><p>The voices of Misira and Shrive echoed through the vaulted stone hall. Eír's fingers traced along the cracked rock wall as she walked silently toward them.<p>

She had kept mostly to herself since Gellian's funeral. It was time filled with grieving, anger and exhaustion…and a lot of thinking. This morning was the first she had ventured forth, seeking out Shrive and the comfort only another could bring.

At first, the sound of the asari women's voices didn't concern her, merely indicated their location. As she drew nearer, however, she slowed, her brows creasing. There was tension in the air, in the tones of their conversation. Approaching the athenaeum's library, she slowed even more, creeping to the edge of the archway to listen.

"…wise in many things, Shrive," Misira was saying. "You have great strength, great cunning…it is what makes you the huntress you are. But you are _still_ young-"

"Youth does not make me foolish, Mother," Shrive replied. "Youth does not make my choices invalid."

"No, but it narrows your sight, Shrive, clouds your judgment with inexperience. Do you truly think I don't understand? I was a Maiden myself once. I made poor choices, as do all Maids at some point or another-"

"It is _not_ a poor choice, and should I make a mistake, then it is _mine_ to make."

"And where do you see this leading, Shrive? How long do you give it? Decades? Centuries? Will you be old Matriarchs together, shunned by your people, all your daughters outcasts for what they are?"

"Because they are pureblood?" Shrive asked. "_She_ is pureblood, Mother, and she is the strongest asari that I have ever seen. The strongest _you_ have ever seen."

"That only makes it worse, Shrive," Misira insisted. "How did that turn out for her? Left to another Matriarch to raise, ostracized by her people, so emotionally starving that she turned to an ill human woman for a mother's guidance at a time in her life she should have been striking out on her own? Worse…your daughters would be the pureblood children of a pureblood parent. That increases the chances of Ardat-"

Shrive's scoff was bitter. "So if you cannot impart _reason_ to sway me you will attempt with fear?"

"You _must_ face the reality of it, Shrive. Ardat-Yakshi. It is real. It happens. It is painful enough for an asari to live with the stigma of being pureblood but what if your daughters are afflicted further, Shrive? What if you must see them make a choice…a choice to be locked away, imprisoned in a solitary, loveless existence, unable to receive companionship…or else to be _killed_?"

There was silence a moment, before the Matriarch continued in a much gentler tone. "Shrive, I love you. I know that you are grown now, that you must take your own paths in this world but you _must_ see this for what it is. It is just an infatuation. You're both young, free-spirited. It all seems so perfect to you…young romance with the spice of a forbidden love…but it is _not_ forever after. Go out into the galaxy if you must. Go with _her_ if it is your desire. But recognize it for what it is…a _fling_, one that is doomed to pass. When it is time, let her go and move on."

Eír's head was swimming, her eyes blurred as she edged away from the arch, turning and fleeing back along the corridor towards her room. Closing the door she leaned on it, gasping as the tears began to fall.

Pureblood, Ardat-Yakshi…_killed_? All the words seemed to swirl and spin in her head until she was sick and dizzy. She knew what an Ardat-Yakshi was, another dry piece of asari history imparted to her by the tank. Just a word, just a concept, but now thrown as a possible reality into her path.

She could not be with Shrive. Her entire heart and soul seemed to fold and crumple inward at the thought. Moving away from the door, she fell into a sit on her bed, struggling against sobs.

Just a few days ago she had thought her feelings were ones of hatred. She had even planned Shrive's death at her own hands, more than once. But now the thought of living without her was such an agonizing pain she thought something might physically be wrong. This could not be normal. How could the idea of someone's absence hurt so much? Gellian's death had been very painful but this…_this_ stole her breath away.

_Perhaps I have some illness? Some defect? Perhaps I should go to see Linai…_

She rose, then startled with a gasp as her door chime caught her by surprise. She stared at the aperture as if expecting it to spring open and unleash rabid varren into the room. One hand plastered over her stomach, she shakily wiped her tears away and moved forward, prompting the door to open.

Shrive stood there. When the huntress saw her, her expression immediately turned to alarm. "Eír? What's happened?"

Surging forward Eír embraced Shrive almost painfully tightly, clinging to her. Shrive managed to steer her backward enough to allow the door to close, returning the embrace just as tightly.

"Eír? _What's wrong_?" she asked with worry. "Are you ill?"

"I think I'm dying," Eír sobbed. Shrive blinked, loosening the embrace enough to look into the other asari's face.

"Wh-_what_?"

"I can't…I can't be with you," Eír gasped. "Our daughters would be outcast, killed! You're going to leave me-"

"Eír…sweetheart, slow down! Calm yourself, here…"

She helped Eír to sit on the edge of the bed, wiping at the girl's cheeks and searching her lavender eyes. "What are you speaking of? What is causing you pain?"

"I-I heard you and your mother," Eír stated miserably. "She said you cannot be with me, she said our daughters would be pureblood, that they would be monsters and have to be killed-"

Shrive's gaping surprise turned to stone, and she glared at the doorway as if she could see Misira on the other side of it. Looking back at Eír she shook her head, cupping her cheeks.

"No, _listen_ to me," she said in a gentle voice. "Eír, listen, _please_. Mother is a wise Matriarch but she _can_ be wrong, and she _is_ wrong. Listen to me. I make my own choices. Mother cannot dictate that…no one else can dictate it but me. The chances that any of our daughters would actually become Ardat-Yakshi are so incredibly slim…if we even decided to remain together long enough to _have_ daughters."

"But it's possible!"

"No…I'm not entirely convinced of that," Shrive replied. "Perhaps if you truly were a conventional pureblood, then-"

"What? What do you mean, 'conventional?'" Eír asked.

Shrive smiled with affectionate patience. "We _Joined_, Eír. Melded. I saw your memories…flat ones, two dimensional creations telling of Benezia and your childhood. But I also saw rich ones, _real_ ones…the tank…the lab…Gellian's affection and misguided vendetta. It explains your incredible strength, your skill."

At the look on Eír's face, Shrive shook her head. "I don't _care_, Eír. The body, the parents, the way of creation…none of this matters. I see _you_. Your fire and spirit…_these_ are Eír, not the creation of any genetics, purposefully in a lab or accidentally in a womb. Were it your soul in any other form, I would _still_ love you."

Love. Yes, _that_ was what this was. This whirlwind, this pain…it was all _love_.

"You love me?" Eír asked timidly.

"Yes," Shrive said without hesitation. "My mother may think I mistake my feelings, she may think that I am confusing lust or infatuation for love but I _know_ what my heart speaks. _No one_ can know what the future will bring. It is not given to us to know it. I only know what is _now_. And right now, I want to be with _you_. It may all fall apart in the end, but I want to _try_."

Eír looked at her eyes a moment, then almost leapt forward, kissing the other girl with the same nearly bruising force she had in the campsite. Almost forcing herself to break it her trembling hands cupped Shrive's cheeks, their foreheads together.

"I want to leave this place," she whispered, her voice shaking. "I don't want to be here anymore. I want to go away. _Far_ away. I…I don't know if Thug will come with me but…but _you_. Please…_please_ come with me. Please, let's get away from here…_anywhere_…"

Shrive nodded. "I have a small ship," she whispered back. "I can make arrangements…I know a place we might be welcome. I have a friend, Teful, he's a batarian. Owes me a favor. I can call him. We can be gone in the morning…whenever you wish."

"_Yes_," Eír replied, surprised at the strength of her own convictions. She hoped Thug would come along but the krogan had to follow his own path, just as she had to follow hers. This, being here on Tuchanka, hunting for Shepard…this was _Gellian's_ plan, _Gellian's_ dream.

And Gellian was dead, her dream dead with her. Now, it was time for Eír to dream a new one.

One that was solely her _own_.

* * *

><p><em>{Shepard, where <em>_**are**__ you?}_ Miranda's voice was irritated, but Shepard could hear the frantic undertone, the note of worry.

Soaking wet, streaked with soot, Shepard was scrolling through a console ledger outside a sealed set of doors. She barely glanced up from the scrolling names as she replied.

"Outside the Baria Frontiers office. Third floor, should be clear."

_{We're there now.}_

She caught the bobbing omni-lights out of the corner of her eye as Miranda and Kasumi rounded the corner onto the third floor, weapons ready. Seeing only bodies, both shot mercs and civvies killed in the blast, they headed to Shepard's side.

As the Commander turned from the console, Miranda tossed her a shield generator. Snagging it out of the air, Shepard clipped it to her belt.

"We couldn't carry your hard-suit up, it's still in the shuttle," the Australian explained. "Are you hurt? Did you find Liara?"

"No," Shepard said, powering the barrier on. "She signed into the Frontier's ledger only a few minutes before the blast. She's got to be somewhere inside."

"I got the door," Kasumi said, already moving to unlock it. In less than a second she had it from red to green. Almost at the same moment, a pair of muffled gunshots sounded from behind it. Instantly Shepard had her pistol in hand, rushing forward.

The door slid open, revealing two corpses and a very alive Vasir. The asari woman was still lowering her weapon, glaring at a dead merc at her feet.

The other corpse was a salarian. He'd been shot against the wall. Shepard recognized him instantly as Sekat, his bright gold eyes already faded.

"Shit," Tela frowned. "He pegged the informant. If I'd been a goddamn second faster-"

Shepard stepped over the dead merc, her pistol still gripped in both hands as she walked past Tela and strode around, checking the entire office. Looking back sternly at Vasir she demanded, "Where's Liara?"

Vasir lifted her brows. "I don't know," she replied. "I did not find her on the way down."

"The ledger said she just signed in here!" Shepard barked.

"Listen, _calm down_. We'll find her. We'll go back over each floor if we have to. Rescue workers are already arriving. They'll help us find her body-"

"You mean _this_ body?"

Kasumi blinked in surprise, stepping aside as the asari strode in. She had a pistol in her hand, her clothes and face damp and streaked with soot. Her eyes were ice, her sites firmly affixed to Vasir.

Shepard felt a blast of relief so strong her knees threatened to go weak a moment. As fast as the sensation hit her, however, she was brushing it aside, her own pistol snapping up to aim at Vasir. Whatever help the other Spectre had been, if guns were going to start aiming, she was taking Liara's side, _hands down_.

Of course, the instant Shepard aimed at her, so, too, did Kasumi and Miranda. In less than a second, Vasir had all four weapons on her.

"What's the skinny, Li?" Shepard asked warily, narrowing her eyes at Vasir.

"_This_ is the woman that tried to kill me," Liara accused. Instantly Shepard's jaw flexed, the spark in her eye less one of caution and more one of murder.

"That blast must have addled your brain, sweetie," Vasir snorted. She seemed completely unconcerned about the four weapons aimed at her head, beyond taking half a step backward toward the window that overlooked the Trade Center lobby three stories below.

"After I left my apartment, I doubled back," Liara replied. "I saw your skycar leave the rooftop next door, the _same_ rooftop the shots were fired from. I saw you land on the roof of my building and _I saw you_ try and break into my apartment! Shepard, she killed Sekat, took the location data, and then shot her own accomplice to cover up what she'd done."

"You're working for the fucking _broker_, Vasir," Shepard growled dangerously. Vasir's eyes only half-shifted to her, before she smiled at Liara.

"You just don't know when to stop meddling," she almost cooed to the other asari. "Guess it comes from being a pureblood _**bitch**_!"

The window behind her suddenly exploded in a flare of biotics. Shards of glass, some large enough to decapitate, shot into the room and toward the four as Vasir threw her hand out. As gracefully as a suitor about to propose, Liara dropped smoothly to one knee, her hand uplifting as she drew up a biotic shield around them. The glass shards crumpled against it, raining almost musically to the ground.

Darting forward without thought the moment she dropped it, Shepard charged toward Vasir as the other Spectre turned and hopped up into the window frame. As she tensed to leap, Shepard launched herself forward, tackling her.

In an instant they were in freefall, tumbling down toward the lobby floor almost fifty feet below. Vasir twisted in Shepard's arms like a serpent, a biotic bubble surrounding them and slowing their momentum. Shepard gripped her wrist, managed to land a right hook into Vasir's chin, but to the asari's credit she was not addled. Twisting more, she grabbed Shepard and even as they neared the ground, biotically slammed the human woman away from her.

Shepard hit the lobby floor with force…not as _much_ force as she would have, had their entire fall gone unimpeded, perhaps, but it was bone-cracking force nonetheless. Her air vacated, she felt at least one rib give way, and darkness fell.

It had to have lasted only a few moments, because when vision slowly returned she was still struggling to gasp in air, stunned and unable to move. She could see Vasir pelting away from her across the lobby floor, aiming for a set of stairs. Addled, Shepard's weak thought was _why is she going back up when we just came down? _

A moment later a pair of booted feet wreathed in blue landed only a few feet away, and Shepard's eyes fixed to Liara sprinting after Vasir.

Her breath seemed to be returning, each inhale laced with the more than familiar fire broken ribs brought. Struggling up to her hands and knees, Shepard weakly managed to get to her feet just as Miranda and Kasumi rushed to her side.

"Are you all-"

"Get after her!" Shepard gasped, pointing toward the stairs. "Li can't…take her…alone!"

As her two friends turned and ran after the pair of asari, Shepard coughed, shaking her head to clear it as she pulled out her second pistol. She'd dropped the first…upstairs, when they'd hit the ground, she wasn't sure _when_, but she had no time to look for it now. Ignoring the grinding sensation in her chest, she loped toward the stairs, refocusing on the task at hand.

She was going to _erase_ Vasir, _before_ the woman had a chance to so much as _breathe_ on Liara.

Gunshots, from the second floor balcony. Shepard ran that way, lifting her pistol as she burst outside, just in time to see Vasir leap off of the railing. Not halting her charge, she only slowed as she saw Vasir's skycar sweeping upward, door still swinging shut.

"Fuck!" She coughed, then blinked as a sharp shot sounded near her ear. Kasumi lowered her strange looking pistol, grinning as a tiny flashing light appeared on the underside of the skycar.

"Nailed it," the thief grinned. "Tracking device. Limited range though, we'll have to hurry."

"The shuttle is just down in the courtyard," Miranda said as the group headed back across the balcony and for the stairs. Shepard kept her pistol in hand, her other lightly pressed to her burning side.

"A shuttle will be too slow," Liara shook her head as she fell in beside them, still out of breath. "We need a skycar."

They ran out into the courtyard. Emergency vehicles had already landed, crowds gathering, the wounded from the explosion being helped. Shepard wove her way through the chaos, the others on her heels as her dark eyes searched.

She spotted an open taxi. The driver was standing in the door, gaping at the still smoking, ruined building. Shepard grabbed his arm and shoved him out of the way even as she stepped past him and slid into the driver's seat.

Stumbling, the turian male recovered and rounded on her. _"Hey!"_

Shepard's glare was stone as she aimed her pistol at him. Immediately he lifted his hands and backed away. "Take it!"

The other three women climbed in as Shepard powered the vehicle up, lifting it into the air almost before the doors had fully shut.

"She's heading toward the city center," Kasumi reported, watching the signal from her omni-tool. "Cut directly west and then swing over north at Vela Park, we should be able to cut her off."

Shepard aimed the taxi accordingly, leaping up to top speed before she half-glanced over at the asari seated beside her. "You ok?"

Liara didn't seem to hear her, eyes fixed to the side window as she scanned visually for a sign of Vasir's skycar. Shepard frowned. "_Hey_!"

Liara glanced at her, eyes wide in surprise.

"Are you _ok_?"

"Yes, Shepard. I am fine," she replied, and returned her attention to the window. Shepard's frown deepened and she scowled out of the windscreen.

"Yeah, _I'm fine too_, thanks for _asking_."

"Shepard…" Liara murmured, brows knit as she glanced back at the human woman. The commander didn't even look at her.

"What the fuck ever," she grunted. "Kasumi?"

"Uh…nearly there," the thief replied. "You should see her any moment, directly ahead."

Shepard's eyes narrowed as she caught sight of the skycar. "There she is. Hang on."

She urged the taxi even faster, sweeping in toward the other Spectre's skycar. She slid in so close she could see the asari woman's eyes widen in surprise, before she suddenly turned her wheel.

In moments it was an all out chase, Shepard dogging Vasir's tail and trying to force her both out of traffic and down to land. When the asari cut through a construction site Shepard nearly lost her again, the distance between them a bit greater when she swung in on her tail again.

"There, that tunnel," Liara pointed as Vasir cut a sharp right into a transfer tunnel. As Shepard followed, Vasir swept in too close to a large truck. The driver overcompensated, and in a flash, the huge vehicle was careening out of control, directly for the taxi.

"Truck!" Liara gasped, eyes widening as she braced herself.

"I know," Shepard growled, and pushed harder on the gas. The taxi sailed forward, directly at the tumbling death bearing down at them.

"_TRUCK_!" Liara shouted frantically.

"_I KNOW_!" Shepard barked. Liara let out a squeal of terror and clenched her eyes shut even as Shepard whipped the wheel. The taxi spun to the side and slid upside down against the tunnel wall, the top of its hood skimming past the crest of the truck with literally a layer of paint to spare. Safely past, Shepard whipped the taxi back down with a terse grin.

"Ha!"

"Y-y-you're enjoying this," the asari said tremulously.

"I think I'm going to be ill," Kasumi whispered from the back seat.

"Where is she?" Shepard demanded. Kasumi looked back at her omni-tool. "There…just above us, twenty meters."

Shepard, clear of the tunnel, banked sharply upward, swinging in directly beside Vasir even as the woman turned to mislead the other direction.

"Not this fucking time," Shepard growled, and swung the taxi into the side of the skycar. Taken by surprise, Vasir overcompensated, and as the skycar spun it clipped yet another vehicle, sending it into an irrecoverable spin. It whipped past, tumbling out of control. Shepard turned her head, trying to track it as the skycar crashed hard into the top of a building.

"She's down on Azure," Liara announced, even as Shepard turned the car and aimed it toward the rising plume of smoke.

Landing on the large, open air garden of the Azure Hotel's chain of luxury suites, Shepard didn't even bother to power the taxi down, out of the vehicle the moment the doors were open. Her pistol fixed toward the open door of the crashed skycar, she quickly realized that no one was inside, and that heavy spots of dark, purplish-blue blood had smeared all over the ground nearby.

"She's out and she's hurt," she declared.

"This way, Shep…there's blood spotted over here."

As she turned muffled gunshots rang through the air, punctuated by the sound of shattering glass and a few startled screams.

Shepard, still sans hard-suit, her cracked ribs stitching a painful cramp along her side, nevertheless ran immediately that direction, pistol up and ready, the other three women close behind.

Glass patio doors leading into one of the suites had been shattered. Heavy spots of more blood left no question as to who had done it. Striding into the suite, Shepard's brown eyes fixed on the far door even as a frightened civvie crouched halfway behind a bed lifted a shaking hand, pointing in the same direction.

"Th-there…she went th-th-that way…"

Shepard continued on again, turning to clear a doorway as she passed it, seeing only another frightened face peeking out of a small bathroom. As she reached the door, Kasumi stepped past her, already vanishing.

Seeing a wide walkway continuing on toward more suites, Shepard glanced at Miranda. "Take the left side. Liara, go right. I'm in the middle."

The three women fanned out, moving carefully. Luxury hotel or no, they were three hundred stories in the air, and the wind up here was fierce. Shepard felt a familiar touch at her elbow halfway across the walk, a moment before Kasumi shimmered into being again.

"She's still moving," she reported. "The blood trail is more and more copious, she's very badly hurt. I wasn't able to spot her but I think she's trying to find a way down. She cannot be far from collapsing."

"She can't get away-" Liara began. Shepard, aching and irritated, shook her head sharply.

"Fuck! She's _not_ getting away, ok?"

Pushing forward, she reached the end of the walkway, the blood trail cutting through yet another suite before reaching a second open garden. A couple of more civvies were huddled at the far end, frightened and trying to stay out of sight behind a large planter and a set of tables. Vasir herself was halfway across the area, limping heavily, one hand plastered to her stomach, body hunched as she moved. Even with the distance between them, Shepard could see the thick, dark blood painting the legs of her hard-suit, running visibly down and splattering on the ground.

Vasir caught sight of her almost the same moment that she was seen. As Shepard broke into a jog, pistol aiming, Vasir suddenly lunged and snatched hold of one of the civvies, yanking the human woman to her feet and spinning around, keeping her startled hostage between her and Shepard.

"Stop, Shepard," she warned, planting her pistol against the weeping girl's forehead. "We don't want to see anything happen to this pretty little bitch now, do we?"

Shepard drew to a halt but made no move to lower her weapon. Beside her she could feel the other three doing the same.

"Let her _go_, Vasir," Shepard ordered.

"I will, once I'm in the lift and away," Vasir replied. "This is _over_, Shep. I'm walking away with this intel and in return, you and this pretty little girl are going to get to _live_. Isn't that fair?"

Shepard's face was hard, and she grit her teeth as she shifted her grip on her pistol. "You think I _care_?" she challenged. "You think it matters to me if you take out some silly civilian? You tried to kill Liara! You _did_ kill dozens of innocent people! And for what? A gangster who likes to hide in the dark?"

"Says the Cerberus _puppet_!" Vasir spat back. "The Shadow Broker has helped me for years, gave me damn good intel that's saved thousands of lives! If he wants me to wipe out a goddamn pureblood bitch in exchange, then damn right I will."

Shepard shifted her weight forward threateningly, fingers going white-knuckled on the handle of her pistol. Vasir tensed, her own weapon pressing harder to her hostage's skull in warning. Shepard froze.

Vasir grinned. "Yes, I think you _do_ care," she noted. "I think, _right now_, every overprotective little hero bone in your body is terrified I'm going to pull this trigger. That's your thing, isn't it Shepard? Help the helpless…fight for those who can't fight for themselves…be there for _them_ because no one was there for poor, helpless, frightened little Shepard when _she_ was just a sprat."

"Fuck. _You_," Shepard growled. "You're _not_ walking out of here, and you're _not _shooting that hostage. You can take _that_ to the fucking bank."

Behind Vasir, unseen by the wounded asari and her hostage but clearly visible to Shepard, Kasumi and Miranda, one of the decorative tables wreathed in biotic energy, and slowly began to lift.

Shepard's eyes never flickered. "I'm going to give you _one more chance_. Let her go. Give me the data. Do _that_, and I'll be nice and shoot you in the fucking head, instead of stand on your throat and watch you goddamn bleed out."

"I was a Spectre for a hundred years before you were _born_, Shepard," Vasir shot back. "Now I'm giving _you_ one last chance. Thermal clips on the ground right now, or she dies. It's that simple."

"_Wrong answer_," Shepard snarled.

As Liara suddenly whipped her hand, the table sailed forward, slamming hard into Vasir, knocking her from her feet. She lost her grip on the hostage, who fell nearby, quickly scrambling to get back under cover, sobbing in terror.

Shepard opened fire. She could see the flashes as her bullets whipped against the asari's dying shields even as Vasir, now on her knees, aimed her own pistol.

She fired twice. Shepard didn't feel a single shot even bump her shields, her finger still holding down the trigger on her rapidly heating weapon. She heard Kasumi exclaim something but it was muffled. Miranda was at her shoulder, firing as well, their combined efforts finally overloading the shields.

Vasir's head whipped backward as a neat hole appeared in her forehead. Another opened a bloody blue rent in her throat, and her arms sagged, her already dead body wavering slightly before slowly slumping over.

Releasing the trigger on her gun, Shepard strode up to the woman, kicking the pistol away from limp fingers before planting the heel of her boot on her shoulder, shoving her over onto her back. Blank eyes stared upward, the soul long gone.

Crouching, Shepard holstered her pistol and began to rifle through the pouches on Vasir's belt, swiftly finding the OSD she'd taken from Sekat.

"Shepard!" Miranda's alarmed voice turned her head, and Shepard slid the OSD into the pocket of her cargo pants, even as she straightened. "Shepard, _hurry_!"

Miranda was crouched with her back to the commander, half turned her direction. She looked frightened. Kasumi was crouched beside her, her back also to Shepard, focused on something else. When the commander didn't immediately see Liara, her heart stopped.

Striding forward, she took only two steps before she broke into a run, eyes widening as she bolted to their side.

Vasir's final two shots hadn't been intended for her after all. They had both landed precisely where she had meant them to. The first had pegged Liara's shield generator at her belt, rendering it instantly useless. It was a small target, and at such a distance it was an incredible shot with a pistol, but Vasir had been a Spectre for a reason.

Her second shot, as well, had landed true.

Liara's breath was rapid and gasping, with a terrifyingly wet burble punctuating each inhale. She was trembling, her eyes wide as they focused on Shepard, the human woman dropping at her side. Kasumi's hand was plastered to the wound in her chest but the blood was copious, dark, and flowing fast.

"_No, no, no_!" Shepard heard herself gasp as she all but shoved Kasumi out of the way, planting her own hand over the wound. She could feel the heat pressing against her palm and pressed harder, her other hand slipping under Liara's neck ,her eyes snapped to Miranda.

"_Get a fucking medical team here_!" she shouted, oblivious to the fact Miranda was already contacting the _Normandy_, ordering the shuttle to pick them up and warning Chakwas and her team to be on stand-by.

"Li, _Li,_ stay with me," Shepard ordered. "Stay with me, ok? You're going to be fine…"

She heard the snap of a packet of medi-gel, and moved her hand as Kasumi reached out, lathering it over the wound to staunch the bleeding. Ignoring the blood covering it Shepard planted this hand against Liara's cheek. She could feel herself shaking, her heart racing.

"Shepard," Liara whispered. She had paled, her sky blue eyes half-lidded. Her lips were tinged with the same dark blue that covered her coat.

"No, _d-don't talk_," Shepard urged. "Just keep your eyes open, Li. We're getting you help. Just _don't_ close your eyes."

Liara's hand lifted slightly, lightly grasping Shepard's arm. Her lips moved again but it was just the formation of a word, instead of the utterance of it.

"_Peace."_

"_No!" _Shepard snarled. "_No_ peace! _No __**goddamn**__ peace_, do you hear me! You fucking fight it, T'Soni! That's an _order_! You fight it and you _keep your goddamn eyes open_! Miranda, where's that _fucking _shuttle? !"

Liara's half-lidded eyes began to droop before the Australian could even respond, instantly drawing Shepard's attention again.

"No, stay awake!" she demanded, her words breaking, fear on her face. "Stay awake! Please…oh, God, _please stay awake_! Tianlán, please…_please_…"

It was useless. Hand still clinging to Shepard's arm, Liara's eyes fell shut, a thin trace of sapphire spilling from the corner of her lips.

"Tianlán, please…" Shepard's voice was weaker now, far too much of a sob breaking through. Leaning down her forehead pressed to the asari's and she closed her eyes, struggling against tears.

"_Please…"_


	27. Chapter 27

"Get her out of here!" Chakwas ordered. Shepard felt someone grip her arm and shook them off without even glancing to see who it was.

Liara hadn't opened her eyes again once they had closed. Shepard wasn't sure if she was even still alive, though she doubted the medical team would be bustling about as frantically as they were if she was not. Chakwas was tearing open sterile tubes, Miranda barking orders as she herself started to run IVs. The infirmary door hissed open and Mordin appeared, bustling past and going to sterilize, ready to render assistance in any way needed.

Though she didn't look up from her work, Chakwas knew her commander enough to know that she was still there.

"Her vitals are tanking. I need universal sterilization and we need to operate right now. I need everyone without a medical degree _out of this infirmary_. _Get the commander out of here!"_

Again she was taken by the arm, Kasumi's other hand landing on her shoulder as she tried to steer Shepard back toward the door.

"They need to help her, Shep," she urged as Shepard resisted. Garrus, who had entered on Mordin's heels, unceremoniously swung an arm around Del's waist, bodily lifting her from her feet.

"_Let me go you fuck_!" Shepard gasped, trying to twist to throw a punch. The motion seared pain through her broken ribs and cut her breath short, which was the only thing that saved the turian from a black eye…or worse.

It was only a few steps before they were out of the infirmary, and the instant the door closed he set her back on her feet. One arm slung around her middle, she half-hunched, breathing ragged, eyes closed.

"You ok?" Kasumi asked gently. Shepard nodded but didn't open her eyes. Lightly taking the woman's arm again, Kasumi gingerly steered her back to a bench in the mess hall. This time, Shepard didn't fight her, sitting down and gritting her teeth a little.

"She'll be all right, Shepard," Garrus told her. "She's in good hands, and she's a little fighter. You know that."

Shepard opened her eyes, looking at him balefully. Good hands or not, fighter or not, Shepard knew her luck. You could not be angry at the ocean for being an ocean, perhaps, but she had been hit by too many heavy waves, too many stormy seas, to ever even remotely trust it. If there was a higher power out there, it seemed determined to torture her, to punish her for some unfathomable crime.

Someone with a slightly less pessimistic view of reality might say it was not the universe's way of punishing her, but rather that these things were the grindstone upon which she was tempered, sharpened into the weapon that the galaxy needed right now.

However, grindstone or ocean, punishment or temperance, weapon or not, Shepard was only certain of one thing.

If Liara died, nothing else meant a goddamn thing. Not the Collectors, not the Reapers, not the trillions of lives inexplicably dependent upon her.

_Nothing_.

She was sipping at a coffee that Kasumi had handed her ten minutes later, when Kelly showed up with some dry clothes. Completely without shame or self-consciousness, Shepard stood up from the table and stripped out of her still damp clothing, changing into the dry jeans and button-down that Kelly provided. Fishing in the pocket of her wet cargos she pulled out the OSD, handed it to Garrus.

"Take that to Joker," she said. "It should have a location, even if it's just a system. I want him to find it and give me an ETA on how long it will take us to get there."

As the turian disappeared toward the CIC, Kasumi reappeared, having gone to change her own wet clothing. She seated herself beside Shepard with her own coffee.

Nothing was said. Shepard merely sat, sipping at the joe, eyes unfocused but dry. Kasumi, Kelly, and Garrus when he returned, respected her silence and said nothing, merely lingered nearby, occasionally casting glances toward the infirmary.

It was nearly four hours before the med-bay doors opened, Mordin and Miranda stepping out a breath before Chakwas herself. The instant she saw them, Shepard was on her feet, striding over with Garrus on her heels.

"She'll be all right," Chakwas told her. "She's out of danger."

Shepard's shoulders immediately sagged slightly, and she bobbed her head. "Good…good, thank you."

"We're keeping her out until tomorrow. The bullet fragmented and caused damage to both her heart and her lung, and she lost a lot of blood. The surgery was successful, however, and she should suffer no long term ill effects. I wouldn't recommend she go running any marathons for a while, however."

"That's great news, Doc," Garrus grinned, his mandibles flapping a little.

"Can I see her?" Shepard asked.

"For a little while…after you've been treated," Chakwas said sternly. "Rumor has it you have some cracked ribs that need tending. And no arguments, please. I _treat _you and _then_ you can see her…not the other way round. Or I will forbid you from coming entering my infirmary until she's ready to leave on her own two feet, am I clear?"

Shepard scowled, but Chakwas wouldn't flinch or budge, merely folded her arms and lifted a brow with a stern look only mothers and doctors ever seemed able to perfect. Only when Shepard nodded her head in agreement, did Chakwas direct her into the med-bay.

"Sit still," Dr. Chakwas admonished gently a few minutes later, as she finished the binding. Shepard was fortunate. Her ribs were only slightly cracked, in the one or two spots they were actually still bone. The nanites were already busy at work repairing them, but Chakwas had bound them up just to be safe. Had Shepard still had her natural ribcage, the force with which she'd hit the lobby floor would have had results far more dramatic than a few tiny fractures.

_Fatally_ more dramatic.

Knowing full well where Shepard's attention was and why she kept craning her head around, Chakwas reminded her, "She's going to be _fine_, Commander. I promise."

Finishing the binding she nodded to Shepard that she could pull her shirt back on, and stepped back to wash her hands. "Go on."

Getting to her feet, Shepard stepped away from the bio-bed and headed to the far end of the infirmary, where Liara lay still and silent under a sheet. She still looked pale, but better than she had before, and her face was serene. Shifting a chair over Shepard sat down, almost tentatively reaching out and taking the asari woman's hand in her own.

Though she knew Liara was beyond hearing her, she leaned forward and lightly kissed her cheek, her free hand gently stroking over the folds of her crest as she murmured in her ear.

"Hey, you…" she whispered. "Don't you know that I'm the one that's supposed to get shot? That's my job, Tianlán. It's what I get paid for. You start taking bullets instead and I don't get paid…"

Her attempt at levity fell flat, even to her own ears. Struggling against the heat rising in her eyes she bowed her forehead against Liara's neck.

"It's all right if you hate me," she murmured. "It's all right if you never want to see me again. I'm just a fucked up, boozing, angry little gutter-rat. But this galaxy is only a place worth living in, so long as _you_ are living in it. You're smart and strong, and _everything_ is better off because of you. Walk away from _me_ if you have to, I could never blame you if you did, but please…don't walk away from that. Don't deny the universe your light, or nothing at all will ever be worth fighting for. If someone's got to be shot, let it be me."

She fell silent, just listening to Liara's soft breathing, her fingers still lightly drifting over her crest. A few moments later, and she heard Chakwas clear her throat.

Lifting her head she glanced over at the doctor, who approached with something in her hand. "I thought you might be interested in this," she said, holding her hand out. "She was wearing these underneath her shirt."

Shepard released Liara's hand and held her own out, Chakwas pressing something cold and metallic to her palm, a chain draping down.

Shepard stared dumbly a moment before it registered on her what she was holding. "These are my dog tags," she murmured, turning them over in her fingers. Her thumb moved over the imprinted metal, feeling each tiny raised letter.

She had honestly never thought to see them again. She had been wearing them the night the _Normandy_ had gone down. At best, she had expected them to be permanently lost…at worst little more than hunks of melted metal mingled in with the remains of her hard-suit.

So many emotions passed through her as she looked at them. A marine's dog tags were more than just a means of identification. They were a badge, a signifier of what they had achieved and what they stood for. They were a reminder of their own mortality and a testament to who they were. A marine never took off their dog tags, even to shower.

She had thought all that lost, but here it was again, tangibly in her hand. Her fingers closed over them and she nodded mutely, before winding up the chain and tucking the tags into her pocket. "Can I stay…a bit longer?" she asked.

"Just a few more minutes," Chakwas said. "Then you need to rest. Of course, it makes no never mind to me whether you rest in your room or…say, on a spare bio-bed?"

Shepard nodded gratefully, resting her hand on Chakwas' when the doctor gently squeezed her shoulder a moment before retreating to her desk. Shepard then shifted her grip back over to Liara's limp fingers, drawing her hand up and kissing it softly before she bowed her head.

* * *

><p>"Mother told me to protect you," Thug rumbled, his bright green eyes troubled as he regarded Eír. They were standing upon the launch pad, Shrive's small ship powered up behind them. The other asari girl was standing over with her parents, their conversation masked by the low rumble of engines.<p>

"I know," Eír replied, lifting her hands to cradle his broad head. "And you are the best big brother a girl could ever hope to have. But we cannot live by Mother's path any more. Stay here, Thug. Finish your training. Find out what _you_ want. It's not like we'll never see each other again. When you're ready to leave Tuchanka you can come and see us, _stay_ with us if you want. You'll always be welcome."

"Do you know where you are going?" he asked.

"Omega, first," she told him. "Shrive knows a batarian man who is there on business right now. He works security and transportation for a colony, out on the fringes. He might be able to get us jobs there, help us get established until we figure out a more solid plan of what we want to do. It's a start, anyway."

He glanced over at Shrive a moment, before he made a reluctant sound, and looked back at his sister. "You just be careful," he grumped. "Not everyone out there is as nice as the krogan."

She giggled at his gruff attempt at a joke, then cupped his face again, kissing the tip of his nose. "I love you, Thug," she said.

He snorted, wiping a hand over the spot she'd kissed as if disgusted by the action. She knew better, of course, but he _was_ for all intents and purposes, a krogan adolescent…and males in general were strange about such things.

Shrive parted from her parents and gave Eír a nod before she headed into the ship. Eír nodded back, risking a glance over at Misira and Buhto. Buhto seemed unconcerned about the whole situation, and Misira looked a bit too stoic for the expression to be natural. When she glanced at Eír, the younger asari self-consciously looked away, nodding at her brother as she picked up her bag.

"Well, that's it then," she said. "I'd better go. I'll…I'll see you soon, Thug."

He bobbed his head. "Just…be careful, Eír."

She could feel the weight of Misira's gaze following her as she turned and strode for the ship. She forced herself not to look toward the Matriarch, or slow her steps.

_I do not need her approval. Nor does Shrive. This is our life, our choice_.

On board and out of sight of the older asari, the weight suddenly seemed to lift off her shoulders. She stowed her bag as the airlock closed, and hurried up to the helm. The smile that Shrive gave her as she appeared was worth a thousand disapproving looks from Misira or anyone else.

"We'll be at Omega in a few hours," Shrive told her as Eír settled into the co-pilot's chair. "Might be there a day or two before we head for the colony, all depending on what Teful can arrange."

Filled with nothing but hope and excitement for the future, Eír could not stop smiling, leaning over and planting a light kiss on Shrive's cheek.

"A colony, together," she beamed. "Life as we choose it to be."

"That's right," Shrive agreed. As the yellow sky of Tuchanka was replaced with the deep velvet black of space, Eír fixed her eyes on the stars as if she could already see the planet they would someday call home.

"What is it called again? The world where we are going?" she asked. Shrive had told her before, but she had forgotten.

"Well, we still don't know for a surety we're going there, it all depends on Teful."

"I know, but I can hope, can't I? What was it called? I remember it had such a nice sounding name."

"Yes it does," Shrive agreed, removing one hand from the controls to take Eír's, giving it an affectionate squeeze before she pulled up the galaxy map. "It starts with an A…hang on, I have to look it up again. I've got it high-lighted in the navs. Ah…here we go."

She selected a command, the swirling holographic stars zooming in swiftly. In moments a glowing planet shimmered over the con, a serene orb of greens and yellows.

"There it is," Eír said with an almost reverent tone to her voice. "There it is, our new home."

Her eyes sparkled as if they held the stars themselves as she smiled at Shrive.

"Aratoht."

* * *

><p>Shepard remained in the infirmary more or less constantly over the next twenty-four hours, leaving only briefly now and again as duty or biology demanded.<p>

The OSD that they'd rescued from Tela Vasir was encrypted. EDI swiftly cracked the code, and with Joker's help they soon had the coordinates for the Shadow Broker's base. It would take the better part of a week to travel there, and Shepard gave them the green light to start on the way.

When Chakwas declared Liara strong enough to wake up and informed the commander she would be discontinuing the medications keeping her asleep, Shepard abandoned the asari's bedside for the first time in hours, retreating a few feet away, hands clasped nervously behind her back, her face expressionless.

As the medication halted, Chakwas watched the monitors a moment, before nodding. "Here she comes. She's waking up."

Much to the doctor's surprise, Shepard made no move to come closer, merely standing where she was, watching as the asari shifted, grimacing faintly before her eyelashes fluttered.

"There, now. Welcome back," Chakwas smiled as sky blue eyes half-opened, blinking in a fog of confusion.

"Helen," Liara whispered. "What…happened?"

"You were injured…shot…on the top of the Azure Hotel. Do you remember?"

"I…" her brows knit, then her eyes seemed to clear a little, widening a bit. "Vasir!"

She shifted as if intending to sit up. Immediately Shepard took half a step forward, as Chakwas took hold of Liara's shoulders, preventing the girl from rising.

"No, lay still," Helen admonished softly. "Trust me, sitting would be very uncomfortable right now. You were very badly wounded."

"But Vasir…the data…"

"We recovered the OSD," Shepard stated. "Vasir is dead."

Liara's eyes shifted, seeing her standing there for the first time. "Shepard…" she murmured.

Chakwas glanced at Shepard, then lightly touched Liara's shoulder. "I'll leave you two alone for a bit," she said. "Try not to move too much."

Meeting Shepard's eyes sternly, Chakwas headed off toward her desk, out of hearing range. Shepard cleared her throat, stepping to the side of the bed, hands still clasped tightly behind her back.

"How are you feeling?" she asked. Liara's brows knit faintly and she lifted one hand, lightly touching the protective seal over her wound.

"I am…a bit tired, unfocused," she replied. "It feels as if a varren is seated upon my chest but…beyond that, I am fine."

"Good," Shepard replied. "Well, Joker and EDI were able to get through the encryption on the OSD and uncover Sekat's data. According to his numbers the Shadow Broker's main base is on Hagalaz, in the Sowilo system. We are en route now, but it will take us several days before we reach it."

"That is in the Hourglass Nebula," Liara murmured thoughtfully a moment. "There were previous indications but nothing concrete. I…thank you, Shepard. I cannot tell you what this means to me."

"You're welcome, Doctor," Shepard responded, then nodded faintly. "Well. I'm glad to see you're doing all right. I'll let you rest."

"Oh…okay…" Liara murmured tentatively, confusion in her eyes.

"I'll talk to you later."

Shepard turned and walked out, Chakwas looking up at her as she strode past, surprise on her face. Rising, Helen stared after her, then looked back at Liara before heading to the asari's side.

The injured woman was staring at the ceiling, her blue eyes gloss and fogged with more than mere pain medication.

"Liara?" Chakwas asked in concern. "Are you all right?"

"I will be fine," the asari replied softly.

"I don't know what's gotten in to her," Chakwas replied. "In twenty-four hours she's barely left your side. Garrus had to carry her out of here when you were first brought in. I'm surprised I didn't end up patching his hide too after that. And then suddenly…this? I don't understand it."

Liara blinked at her. "She…did not leave my side?"

"No," Chakwas replied. "She even slept on the next bio-bed…if you can call getting up every five minutes to check on you 'sleeping'. I don't think I have ever once seen the commander actually afraid before, until I saw her face as they were bringing you in. The woman was terrified."

Liara blinked, her lower lip trembling a little. "I feared she hated me…"

"Shepard?" Chakwas asked in shock. "Hate you? What do you possibly think you could have done that she would hate you?"

Liara simply shook her head, a weak hand banishing a tear before it could fall. Chakwas knew better than to press. If Liara got too worked up emotionally right now it would only hinder the healing process.

"Nevermind," she murmured. "You just rest for now. I'm not sure what's going on or why you would think the commander could ever hate you, but rest assured. What I've seen since the moment you were hurt is _anything_ but hate."

* * *

><p>"Commander?"<p>

"Kelly, I am _extremely_ busy," Shepard grumped as she scanned over the ship's reports, heading up toward the helm. Undeterred, the yeoman trotted after her.

"I understand that, Commander," she replied. "Dr. Chakwas wanted me to notify you that Dr. T'Soni is on her feet-"

"Good, she's recovering well then," Shepard said crisply as she arrived at the helm. "Joker, did you send down a work order to Daniels and Donnelly to trim the port thrusters by .7?"

"Uh, yes ma'am?" Joker replied, blinking up at her.

".7 is outside of the approved navigation specs."

"True, but-"

"Commander, you have not been to see Dr. T'Soni in two days," Kelly interrupted.

"I understand that, I have a lot of things on my plate, Yeoman," Shepard said testily. "We don't know what we're going to face on Hagalaz and I'd like to make sure everything is up to spec before we arrive. Which I cannot _do_ if my pilot continues to tweak the system _out_ of spec."

"Well, I ran the numbers, and while it _is_ out of spec-" Joker tried to explain, only to be interrupted again.

"Shepard, you _need_ to go down and see her," Kelly urged.

Shepard's eyes were hard as rock as she fixed them on her yeoman. "You are out of line," she said sternly. "Dr. T'Soni is in Dr. Chakwas' capable hands and from what you just told me, she is recovering just fine. I fail to see why my presence is necessary when I have work-"

Chambers didn't so much as flinch. "_Work_ Operative Lawson can be seeing to," she said calmly. "And you have never questioned Joker's work orders before, nor his tweaks to the guidance and navigation systems. He knows what he's doing, and you _know_ he knows what he's doing. You are indulging in busy work to distract yourself when right now what you _need_ to be doing is going down to the infirmary and talking to Liara T'Soni, not hiding behind your duties and rank like a frightened child!"

Joker stared at the two women as if they had just turned into vorcha, shrinking back a little in his seat, and fully expecting to see the pretty redheaded yeoman get a few of her nice white teeth knocked loose. In all the time he had worked with Shepard, he had never seen anyone speak to her like that and get away with it. Even Ashley, when she'd tried to come back on duty too soon after an injury and dared to use the words 'with all due respect' with Shepard, had earned an acid-coated tongue-lashing that even _his_ ears were still ringing from.

Instead, Shepard wordlessly flung the data pad at Chambers' chest and turned on her heel, striding back off toward the CIC and the lift beyond. Kelly awkwardly caught the pad, watching her go before she let out a shaky breath, and glanced at the wide-eyed Joker.

"I don't think I'll get away with doing that ever again," she said shakily.

"You're telling me!" he replied. "I was expecting the galaxy to be down a cute redhead."

Kelly arched a brow, then smirked as she tilted her head. "_Cute_, huh?"

"Uh…what's that EDI? Oh yes, trimming the nav specs. I'm right on that."

Kelly grinned as she turned and walked away, hearing EDI pipe up behind her.

"I did not say anything, Mr. Moreau."

"I know! Just _shut up ok_?"

* * *

><p>Shepard's hand gripped tightly in her pocket as she stood outside the med-bay door. The rounded edges of metal bit into her palm for a long moment, before she forced her hand to loosen, forced herself to step forward enough to trigger the door.<p>

As it opened, her eyes landed first on the two women at the far end of the room. Chakwas was standing beside Liara, who was on her feet if a little unnaturally stiff. Both looked over, and when she saw it was the commander, Chakwas made sure Liara was steady, then excused herself.

"I'll leave you two to talk," she said as she stepped past Shepard and out toward the mess hall. The door slid shut behind her.

For a moment, the two women simply looked at one another. Liara had one hand on the bio-bed, the other lightly pressed to her stomach. After a moment, she shifted with a faint wince, and Shepard strode forward.

"Hey, here. Not too fast," she murmured, catching Liara's arm lightly and helping her over to sit in a nearby chair.

"Th-thank you," Liara replied as she sat. "I…am still a little weak."

"Course you are. It's not going to go away all in one day," Shepard soothed, then seemed to remember herself. She drew her hands back, clearing her throat a little. Liara looked up at her, blue eyes pleading.

"Don't do that," she begged softly.

"Do what?" Shepard asked.

"Go away like that," Liara answered. "It is like you are close, with me, and then…you are so far away."

Shepard's demeanor didn't soften, and Liara's gaze drifted to the floor.

"You are here, and yet you are not," she murmured sadly. "Please…yell at me. Curse me if you have to, even strike me if you must. I can take all of that. I cannot take your indifference."

The stoicism cracked a little. "I would _never_ hit you," Shepard replied indignantly. "Liara, I understand that I was gone. I know that people change. Two years is…things happen in two years. People change. They move on. You made it quite clear that you've moved on. I understand. I am…trying not to intrude."

"I-I made it clear…?"

"Yes," Shepard replied. With her neutrality shattered her anger was coming out, a far more comfortable emotion for her than hurt or grief, fear or heartbreak. "In your office. On that phone call. At the Trade Center…for fuck's sake, Liara…I fell five goddamn stories and you didn't even _glance_ back!"

"I-I knew Tela would turn back, finish you off while you were laying there…I couldn't hesitate, Shepard. I had to get her away from you, make sure she didn't escape-"

"Because of your vendetta, your quest for vengeance on the Shadow Broker."

Now _Liara's_ temper was rising. Tears running down her cheeks she gripped the arms of the chair, fury on her face as a weak wreath of biotics made her entire body shimmer.

"_He tried to take you away from me_," Liara shot. "Feron sacrificed himself for me…for _you_…and now the Broker has him. Were it Ashley, or Garrus, or Tali that had been tortured at the Broker's hands for two years, would you still say such things? Or would you be fighting with every ounce of strength you have to get them back safely, to make sure the Broker _paid_?"

"I'm _here_, aren't I?" Shepard asked. "I'm here for _you_, Liara. Because it's _your_ friend that needs help. We're heading to the Broker's base right now, and when we get there I will do everything I can to take him down and help your friend. I-"

She broke off, shaking her head. "No. No, I'm not here to fight. I just…I just don't know where we stand, Liara. I don't seem to know anything, anymore. I can't…I can't begin to imagine what you've gone through the last two years but I know it's not right of me to just…it's not fair for me to just come back into your life and expect that nothing is going to have changed. I'm trying to be respectful, trying to…Li, I'm sorry…"

Liara's tears, silent as they might be, were her undoing. Stepping forward she moved to her knees in front of Liara's chair. Reaching out she cupped the asari's face, Liara hanging her hands from Shepard's forearms as their foreheads rested together.

A thousand words began to form, and a thousand times none would emerge. Finally Shepard managed to speak.

"I am here for you, Liara," she whispered. "However you need me to be. If you need me to fight for you, to listen, to set goddamn fire to something, I'm here."

Liara couldn't help a faint little laugh at that, sniffling a little.

Shepard smiled too, but it was far too brief as she continued on. "And if you need me to go away, I understand."

"No," Liara murmured, tightening her grip on Shepard's arms slightly, possessively. "No, Shepard. I do not know…I have been so hurt, so confused, for so long I do not even…I do not know where to start, I…just…no. I do not want you to go away."

"Ok," Shepard said softly. "_That's_ a start, then. We'll start there."

* * *

><p>The holographic image of the planet spun silently above the conference table on the <em>Normandy<em>, reflected in a dozen sets of eyes.

"This is Hagalaz," Miranda stated. "And this…is the Shadow Broker's base."

A small target circle highlighted a tiny area on the planet, right on the median line between day and night.

"We were able to pinpoint the exact orbital path off of the OSD that we were provided," EDI added helpfully. "However only our most sensitive scans even hint at a ship being present along that path. The storm masks it almost perfectly."

"So unless we knew what we were looking for, we'd never find it," Shepard commented. Liara, seated nearby, nodded.

"He hid the base well," she murmured. "The storm is furious and constant where the temperature differentials between night and day meet. The seas boil under the sun, only to snap-freeze at night."

"Unfortunately, our need for stealth and the turbulent atmosphere makes approaching with the _Normandy_ directly an impossibility. And a shuttle is little better," Miranda frowned.

"Shuttle is at least quick and has the best chance of going undetected. How soon until we're in the system proper?"

"Thirty minutes," EDI supplied.

"Good. Have Joker put us in a wide solar orbit. We can take the shuttle to the planet proper and drop off a strike team directly on the hull."

"On the hull," Miranda echoed flatly, as if she couldn't believe her ears. "In an electrical storm. With wind gusts of 100 plus kph."

"I doubt the Broker is going to let us just swoop in and dock," Shepard replied dryly. "And his computer system is probably encrypted tighter than Garrus's ass."

"Hey!" the turian snorted.

"We'll adjust our mag-locks to hold in wind gusts of that speed and we have the best chance of remaining undetected for far longer by taking that approach. We can find a point of entry and bring down their defenses from the inside."

"It sounds risky," Jacob shook his head. "But it probably is the best plan we have. Without knowing more about their direct defenses, anything else risks us getting blown out of the sky."

"Joker can pilot us down in the shuttle," Shepard stated. "If anyone can navigate that storm he can. Once we're inside if we can find a way to hack their computer system or bring down their firewalls, we will. That'll give EDI control over the base and with luck, this will be over before the Broker even knows what hit him."

"Very well, you're the boss," Miranda agreed. "Dr. T'Soni can help us monitor-"

"I am going with the strike team," Liara stated matter-of-factly, before Miranda had even finished her sentence. Shepard leaned forward, fixing her with a look.

"Only if Dr. Chakwas clears you for full combat duty," she warned.

"Dr. Chakwas has already cleared me. I have some lingering muscle soreness but there is nothing that should impede my abilities. I am not staying behind, Shepard. We are rescuing my friend, following my 'vendetta', as you put it. I am seeing this to the end."

Shepard nodded slowly, clearly not entirely convinced of the idea but knowing that, short of tying the asari woman up, she was not going to be able to keep her there. That, and she was right. Had it been Ashley, or Garrus, or Tali in there…there was no way in fuck Shepard would have let herself be kept out of the action.

_You cannot be angry at her for doing the exact same things that you do_, she told herself silently, then scowled as she argued her own point. _Yeah, but the things I do get me __**hurt**_**.**

She didn't know if she could stand it, seeing Liara get shot again.

"All right, we have our plan then. Let's get this done people. Garrus, you and Jacob will be on the strike team with Dr. T'Soni and I. I expect you to be in full hard-suits and ready to go in exactly thirty minutes. Dismissed."


	28. Chapter 28

A/N: I altered the Shadow Broker's death just a tad. A teensy _wincey_ little tad. Really. _Itsy bitsy_.

* * *

><p>"Really?" Jacob blinked, light strobing over his face a moment as he peppered the corridor with pistol-fire. Ducking back down behind the wall, he heard the whine and snap as return fire barely missed his face. "It puked on her?"<p>

"Directly in her mouth," Garrus responded from his own cover, slapping another thermal clip into place.

"Jesus, I'd have nightmares for decades after that."

"It was especially interesting with the toxin made her start hallucinating. You think she's scary when she's _sane_-"

Jacob risked a glance out of cover, gesturing at Garrus. The pair opened fire again, three of the Broker's mercs collapsing as their shot tore through shields and armor. The remaining two mercs retreated back behind their cover again, spraying the hallway.

"Scary doesn't begin to cover it," Jacob replied. "Did I tell you what she did when she woke up? Barely an hour on her feet, dressed in scrubs, and she takes out a goddamn heavy mech with a fire extinguisher. Two days later? She takes out another one with just a grenade and a pistol. I swear she would have throttled it barehanded if she'd had to."

Garrus chuckled. "Yeah, sounds about her speed. 'You gotta get in close to the big, scary things Garrus. The bigger and scarier, the closer you gotta get.' I prefer sniping myself. Remind me to tell you about the time she went hand to hand with a thresher maw-"

_{Garrus, Jacob, report!}_ Shepard's voice suddenly barked in their ears.

"We nearly got this hall clear," Garrus replied, touching his ear-bud. "Couple of hangers-on still wanting to dance but nothing we can't handle."

_{Liara's nearly got the door open. Get your tuns back here.}_

"On our way."

"You heard the lady," Jacob grinned, unclipping a grenade from his belt. Setting it, he tossed it down the hall. The two mercs had been creeping forward again. At the rattle of the grenade they tried to leap behind cover again, dropping their weapons.

They didn't make it.

The heavy boom echoed like thunder in the close metal corridor. Jacob shook his head a little, trying to clear the ring as he and Garrus headed back along the hall toward the T-Junction.

Liara was crouched, busily hacking a heavy metal door. Shepard had cleared out the other hallway and was watching her back as she worked.

"All clear this way, Shepard," Garrus reported.

"I have it," Liara announced before Shepard could answer, the door clicking as its lock released. Immediately as she straightened, Shepard leveled her rifle, covering the opening as it slid aside.

Garrus fell in beside her, Jacob and Liara taking flank as they entered the small control room. Swiftly clearing corners, Shepard nodded.

"We're go-"

"_Feron_!"

Liara rushed to the console, eyes wide as she stared through the observation window. Shedding her helmet, Shepard moved over and looked as well.

The drell was strapped into a chair surrounded by monitors and equipment. He did not look good, his eyes lidded in semi-consciousness, his color ashen.

Swiftly finding the intercom into the other room, Liara activated it. "Feron!"

The drell stirred, blinking slowly, his eyes moving to the window. "L-_Liara_?"

"Do not worry, we are going to get you out of there," Liara replied. As she attempted to unlock the clamps holding him to the chair, however, electricity suddenly arced and flashed, blue-white lances spitting through the drell. He cried out and Liara snatched her hands back from the controls as if they'd caught fire.

"Wow…that's…a special kind of cruel," Garrus grumbled.

"He's wired into the power and data network of the entire ship," Shepard murmured, eyes following the heavy conduit and cabling all around the chair. "We try and pull him out he'll cook. We need to shut it down directly at the source."

"F-Feron, can you hear me?" Liara asked tremulously, afraid her actions had rendered the poor man unconscious.

"Yes," he said weakly.

"I am sorry, I did not mean to…we are going to shut down the network, get you out of there."

"The power hub is in the Broker's offices," the drell murmured. "Liara, you can't-"

"We have come this far, we are not stopping now," Liara said firmly. "We will be back. I swear it to you."

"C'mon," Shepard touched her arm. "Through this way. According to the schematics we hacked, the Broker isn't far."

Reluctantly Liara abandoned the console controls. Shepard set her hand on the asari's shoulder reassuringly a moment, before dropping it again and re-donning her helmet.

The final door was easier to hack, mostly because they did not have people shooting at them. The guards and mechs all finally seemed to be dead…or had re-thought their employment. Still, with a single hall between them and the Broker's own front door, Shepard didn't buy that the last stretch of corridor would be unguarded.

As soon as the door unlatched she urged Liara to move to the side, Shepard lowering to one knee and readying her rifle, before nodding at the asari. Liara hit the control and the door slid open.

A great glut of flame spat out of the opening doorway, riding on a stream of high pressure napalm. As the initial stream ended, flames licking up from the metal flooring where the fuel had landed, Shepard turned into the doorway, still on her knee, and fired.

Her bullets shredded into the legs of the merc standing there. His pads caught a couple of shots but the rest would not be daunted. Blood flew and his cry of pain was almost instant. He tried to swing the nozzle of his weapon in her direction and actually managed a short spurt of fire directly at her before he stumbled. Shepard landed two more shots to his chest, before a well-planted shot from Garrus shattered his helmet face-plate and ended his career.

Her HUD was flashing madly at her. Rising, Shepard quickly unfastened her helmet, removing it. Some of the jellied fuel had clung to the crest and was still flaming. She shook it off as best she could, swiping her hand over her shoulder pads to make sure none had stuck there, even as she jerked her chin at the far door.

"Go!"

They edged around the still flaming puddles and darted down the hall. Liara immediately set to unlocking the door. Holding her smoldering helmet in hand, Shepard reached down and picked up the flame-thrower, gripping it a third of the way down its length, mindful of the still hissing pilot light.

Unlike its cheaper counterparts, this particular weapon had the both its flammable and inert gas chambers as part of the actual weapon instead of a separate backpack. Nothing but top of the line shit for the Broker, apparently.

Liara got the door opened in record time. Shepard was only halfway along the corridor when it slid open and her three companions disappeared within, weapons ready. Striding in the door, Shepard arched a brow slightly as she looked around.

The room was large, a computer console hub spanning half of it. It was illuminated by a direct energy plasma power system, a single cache of what had to be hundreds spread throughout the ship casting a shimmering white light down from the ceiling. It gave the room the appearance of being underwater, almost, or of being caught in shafts of sunlight that filtered in through summer clouds.

In front of the console was a desk, at which sat a mountain. The thing there was even bigger than Wrex…and that was saying something. A sentient species, no doubt…but not one Shepard could recall ever having seen. It was hard to imagine the beast as being the Broker. He was made of muscle on top of muscle, every inch of him screaming _predator_.

Liara, Garrus, and Jacob all had their weapons trained to it. The creature itself was simply watching them and seemed to have no weapon in hand or nearby…not that it would need one. Fucker looked like he could accidentally knock down walls if it farted too hard.

Shepard let the butt of the flamethrower sit on the ground as she stopped shoulder to shoulder with her comrades. Casting her smoking helmet down idly, she reached into a pouch on her belt.

"Commander Shepard," the beast behind the desk greeted, his voice deep yet oddly mellow.

_He'd make a good blues singer_, she thought as she drew out a cigar. Tucking it in her teeth she lifted the flamethrower, lighting the smoke with the pilot light before letting the butt drop to the ground again.

"That's me," she replied, then let out a stream of gray and white. "Sorry I didn't knock."

"You should have," the creature rumbled. "I would have let you in."

"That so?"

"You are extremely valuable, Shepard. The Collectors offered a great deal for your body. The offer still stands. Thank you for saving me the trouble of having to retrieve it again. And you brought gifts, as well. There are many mercs who would pay a lot for Archangel…if they knew he was still alive."

Garrus glared, but said nothing.

"You are not taking _anyone_," Liara said, more hatred than Shepard would ever have expected in the woman's voice.

The beast only half looked at her, its expression weary…as near as Shepard could translate it.

"Dr. T'Soni, your little mission has grown quite tiresome. It was amusing at first but it grew old, quickly. This is your doing, doctor. You have brought your friends to this end. Their fate is not my fault. You were warned. Ignorant little asari…this is what happens when you meddle in things you don't understand."

"And what is it I do not understand?" Liara asked, heated. "That you tried to steal my closest friend's body? That you have spent the last two years punishing Feron for helping me to stop you from doing it? Or is it more _personal_ things you think are hidden from me? Like the fact that you're a yahg, a species quarantined to their home world when they slaughtered the Council's first contact teams? Or the fact you cannot possibly be the original Shadow Broker, since this base is older than your planet's discovery? _No_, it must be the dirtiest little secret you have of all…that you were originally taken from your home world to be made into a trophy…or a _**pet**_-"

Shepard could see the beast getting more and more agitated as Liara spoke. Cigar firmly tucked in her teeth, she shifted her grip on the flamethrower, drawing it up to her hip and sliding her hand around to the trigger as she saw his gaze was firmly fixed to Liara.

At the word _**pet**_, however, hell broke loose. Faster than she would have thought from such a big creature, the Broker was on his feet, the huge desk he sat behind rising in his clawed hands as he lifted it and flung it at them, an ear-splitting roar shaking the air.

Shepard dropped the flamethrower, turning and tackling Liara to the ground a breath before the desk sailed over them. Jacob managed to drop but Garrus wasn't fast enough. He was slammed hard to the deck as he was hit, the desk tumbling away in a riot of dented steel and shattering wood.

Scrambling to her feet, Shepard hauled Liara up with her, shoving her toward cover even as she drew out her rifle. Somehow, she hadn't lost her cigar.

Whirling she opened fire at the huge beast, cursing internally as the bullets merely spanked off a set of shields.

The Broker roared again, and in a breath she had three tons of very fast predator bearing down on her. Turning, Shepard bolted, half-leaping, half-skidding over a console bank and dropping down behind it.

The Broker whipped around as a biotic slam slapped across his face, and oriented on Jacob. The former marine grit his teeth as he laid down his own fire, the blaze soon being joined by Shepard's and Liara's as the pair recovered themselves.

Though she could not see the shield generator that had to be clipped somewhere on his huge frame, it was only a matter of time before their attrition overheated it. Once it went down, the fucker was _theirs_.

Shepard could see Garrus laying, unmoving, still out in the open. She didn't know if he was alive or dead but right now there was nothing they could do but try and take the big fucker down before he spotted him.

Liara sent a wave of biotics at the Broker as he closed in on Jacob, but the slam barely stumbled him. Instead of turning toward her he sent out a backhand that knocked Jacob flying from his feet and into the wall. As he crumpled Shepard snatched her knife from her boot and whipped it at the Broker's back.

As it was slower than gunfire, the barriers did not stop the blade and it sank to the hilt directly between the beast's heavy shoulders. He was far too big, his musculature far too thick for her to even hope it would penetrate to spine or organs, but it sure as _fuck_ got his attention.

Whirling back her direction, he lumbered away from Jacob's limp form, streams of saliva running from his triple-jawed mouth as he shrieked.

Strafing to the side, Shepard resumed her gunfire, determined to bring his shields down. Liara managed to stagger the yahg again but even her strongest biotic attacks were doing little more than this.

_His species must have some kind of natural resistance to biotics_, Shepard thought. She'd seen Liara deliver a strong enough biotic slam to addle a full-grown thresher maw. Hitting him as hard as she was, she should have been sending the beast sailing across the room, not merely stumbling his steps.

She heard the tell-tale alarm as his barriers began to overload, even as Liara hit him again. Bellowing in fury, the yahg turned, focusing on the little asari. Shepard rushed out of cover, gun overheating as she aimed every shot toward his head.

The barriers dropped just as she fired her last shot. The bullet sang toward his now unprotected skull but just as it was about to strike, there was an incredible white flash of light. Shepard was slammed back off her feet, her mag-locks…tweaked to withstand 100 kph gusts of wind…tearing off the deck with astonishing ease. She crashed into the wall, then dropped hard to the ground.

Coughing slightly, she spat the remains of her cigar out as she struggled to push herself up, to reorient herself. Her hard-suit had absorbed most of the impact but she was damn lucky she hadn't hit the wall head first. Her brain would have been nothing but a pink smear on the metal if that had happened.

Staggering to her feet, she realized she'd lost her rifle and whipped out her pistol instead, aiming it toward the beast still in the middle of the room.

At the far end, she could see a dazed Liara also getting to her feet, darting back under cover. She had been knocked flying by the blast as well.

_What the fuck was __**that**_? Shepard wondered. The Broker wasn't moving, his entire body seemed to be shimmering with white light. Shepard strode forward, firing at him, but the bullets just sang away from his skin.

"The fuck?"

Liara rushed over to her side. "Shepard," she panted. "He has access to top of the line technology intel. That is a prototype kinetic energy barrier. Bullets and biotics will not penetrate, and it will not overload through attrition, not without heavier caliber slugs."

"Great," Shepard glowered, then grinned the kind of grin that usually made people extremely nervous. "We do this the old fashioned way, then."

"What old-fashioned…no, _wait_!"

Shepard ran forward as the yahg seemed to catch his breath, finally looking around for his prey. As he turned his head, Shepard's fist came sailing out of the gloom, slamming him hard right in the eye.

He bellowed in surprised pain, swinging a big arm out to where he thought she was, and missed. Pain ripped through his back again as she swung up, managing to grab the hilt of her knife and ripping it out of his flesh.

_That sword Kasumi gave me would come in real handy right about now. I seriously need to have her teach me to use it,_ Shepard thought as she let herself drop back to the ground, barely missing another swipe of the huge claws.

There were always constants to consider when fighting hand to hand, regardless of the species or gender or sheer unbelievable size of one's opponent. First, there were _always_ vulnerable spots. Eyes. Throats. Genitals. Sometimes _finding_ those things could be a little tricky as they weren't always in the exact same spot from race to race, but…there was _always_ at least one.

Second, the bigger something was the closer you had to be. Instinct was to try and stay away, keep out of reach, but you only let a swing or a strike gain momentum that way so if one _did_ hit you, you were paste. Big things were clumsy up close. They had a harder time orienting on a closer target, could gain no real power into their blows, and did not compensate as fast.

Stay close, stay fast, and you stayed alive.

Praying that the yahg kept their naughty bits in roughly the same place as most other species, Shepard rolled and jabbed in with her knife, even as the Broker stepped over her and started to turn, trying to figure out where she'd gone.

The knife struck flesh, sinking deep, and the Broker's alarmed and horribly pain-filled shriek told her that yes, indeed, their naughty bits were exactly where she'd hoped they were.

Dodging a weakly aimed stomp, Shepard ripped her dagger out and scrambled to her feet, leaping atop him again. Arm swung around his neck as if embracing an old friend, her feet off the ground, Shepard jammed the blade to the hilt in his eye, driving it deep enough to, she hoped, reach his brain.

He thrashed convulsively, and she lost her grip, thrown free. As she tumbled to a halt, Liara was suddenly between her and the Broker.

"Li!" she called in alarm, unsure what the asari was planning.

Then she saw the flare of biotics, saw glass start to crack, and surged to her feet.

The direct energy plasma held in the cache above the middle of the room would dissolve flesh on contact. The Broker was directly beneath it, flailing in blind, furious madness, streams of foaming saliva and thick gluts of blood spraying everywhere. Even as Shepard gained her feet Liara tore her hands downward.

The cache erupted in a rain of glass and energy plasma, the flood spilling down over the Broker in the split second before the failsafes locked the flow down. The power flickered, consoles dying, the entire room going nearly black for a moment, save the shining glow of the plasma-coated Broker screaming in the center of it.

The lights rose and power returned a moment later as the other caches took the load and restored energy.

The plasma did not retain its destructive property long once in contact with oxygen. The Broker died hard, but even as he fell to his knees…his screaming halted, half his body almost skeletal as his melting flesh slid off of bone…the fluid coating him was going inert.

Enough, however, landed on the prototype barrier generator at his belt, swiftly eating through the plastic and metal and striking its power source.

Shepard was not expecting the Broker to explode. There was no warning, no chance to dart for cover or even shield their faces. One moment the thing was dead, falling apart, slowly crumpling to the ground, and the next, the world lit up.

Once again, Shepard found herself flung from her feet as everything went white. Then pain rang through her skull and she fell, white vanishing as black lifted its heavy arms and swallowed her down.

* * *

><p>She became aware first of something tapping her face. Black slowly melted as sound and feeling returned to the world. Her head hurt abysmally. She blinked, trying to focus, a blue smear resolving into Liara's frantic face.<p>

"_Shepard_! Shepard, are you ok?"

Dazed, the human woman managed a languid smile. "You're the best concussion I think I've ever gotten," she quipped.

"Oh, thank the Goddess," Liara breathed in relief. Taking Shepard's shoulders, she steadied her as the commander gingerly pushed herself into a sit, lightly touching the back of her head.

"Not bleeding, that's a good sign," she noted.

"Do not…do not do that to me again!" Liara said sternly, suddenly grasping Shepard's face in her hands, her sky blue eyes furious.

"Hey, I didn't make the Broker expl-" Shepard began, only to be cut off, uttering a muffled sound of surprise as Liara pulled her forward and kissed her.

"…ode?" Shepard managed to finish as Liara drew almost instantly back again. She could feel the asari shaking, and reached up toward her cheek, only to lower her hand again as Liara drew back, getting to her feet. "Li?"

Pushing herself up, Shepard ignored a faint wave of dizziness as she straightened. She'd had far worse concussions before. They were almost as much old friends as were broken ribs.

Liara didn't look at her, heading to where Garrus was weakly trying to regain his own feet, the lump on his skull far more dramatic than Shepard's.

Shepard headed to his side as well, taking his arm to steady him and narrowing her eyes at his uneven pupils. "You just earned yourself a visit to Chakwas, Mr. Vakarian," she said sternly.

"Did we win?" he asked with a weary flap of his mandibles, before spotting the melted, blown-up, unrecognizable mess on the ground. "Uh…guess we did. Sorry I missed the party."

"You just need to quit trying to stop shit with your face," Shepard admonished, clapping him on the shoulder.

Voices suddenly made her look around. The consoles had gone out briefly when the plasma cache had been destroyed. The network had finally completely powered back on and restored itself and now the huge console screens were lighting up with masked, audio-only communications feeds.

A dozen different voices were identifying themselves and asking for the Broker, asking for a report on the loss of connection. More and more were lifting with every moment, the words becoming an almost incomprehensible jumble.

Liara started that way as Shepard turned her head, scanning for Jacob. The man was leaning against part of the ruined desk, using it to steady himself.

"Jacob, you five-by?" Shepard called, still holding Garrus on his feet.

"Yeah, I got a pretty thick skull," he said. "I think I broke my wrist but nothing major. What the hell did you do to the Broker, Shep? He looks like Rupert's leftovers."

"_This is the Shadow Broker_."

The voice, deep, male, synthesized, suddenly filled the room. Almost instinctively Shepard reached for her pistol, her heart nearly stopping. So the yahg hadn't actually _been_ the Broker? He was a ruse, a distraction-…

Then her eyes landed on Liara, standing at the console. She could hear her voice too, speaking the same words that filled the air in that damned synthetic baritone.

"_We had a minor power fluctuation while upgrading hardware, however we are now back online."_

"Wh-what is she doing?" Garrus murmured, shocked.

Running footsteps. Jacob turned, his biotics flaring weakly a moment before he recognized the drell. Feron had freed himself from the chair when the power had dropped. He shakily lifted a pistol slightly toward Liara before he dropped it again in surprise. Shepard headed over to him as Liara continued, having not even noticed.

"_I expect a report on all operations within the next solar day. Shadow Broker out."_

"Y-you're the Shadow Broker?" the drell asked weakly, staring at the asari as she finally turned her head. "H-how…?"

Shepard reached his side, catching the man as he suddenly sagged. Helping him to sit, she withdrew as Liara rushed over, dropping down at his side.

"Feron, are you ok?"

"Just…tired, and…wh-what happened? What did you do?"

"The Broker is dead," Liara murmured. "I…all his contacts, all his information would have been lost. I-"

Liara shook her head, sitting back and covering her face. Brows knit, Shepard gestured Jacob over, then looked at the drell.

"Feron, there was a small medi-lab that we passed on the way in here. Jacob's going to take you and give you a quick scan, make sure you're all right."

"Oh…yes….okay," he replied shakily. Shepard helped him up to his feet, relinquishing him to the former marine.

"Check Garrus too," Shepard ordered Jacob. "Call for the shuttle to come and bring Chakwas down. They can dock now that we have control of the ship."

"Aye," Jacob nodded, supporting the drell as he led him out, Garrus following rather drunkenly.

As soon as the door had closed, Liara pushed herself back up to her feet, turning away and heading for the console.

"Hey," Shepard murmured, following her. Looking up at the monitors she asked, "Are you sure about this, Liara? Are you sure this is what you want?"

"I-…this is what I must do, Shepard," Liara replied softly, leaning on the equipment bank. "All this information, all these contacts…with it I can help you, don't you see? I can help…_Goddess_…two years, and it's all…it's all _over_…"

Her voice broke. Shepard reached out, gently taking her arm and turning her, before she drew her in and hugged her tightly. Liara clung to her as if she were drowning, shaking.

"It's all right," Shepard murmured. "It's ok. It's done."

Liara lifted her head, once again cupping the human woman's face before drawing her in, kissing her with urgent force. After a breath, like before, she started to draw back, to recoil, but this time Shepard didn't let her. She held her firmly, not letting her pull away. Liara's fingers left her cheeks and tangled in her hair, gripping almost painfully tight. After a moment, the kiss broke. This time, Shepard let it, but neither woman tried to draw away from the other.

"Ok?" Shepard whispered, looking upward a little to meet Liara's sky blue eyes with her own.

"Ok…" Liara murmured in return. She searched Shepard's face a moment, before tracing her cheek with her fingers.

"It really _is_ you," she said softly, eyes gloss. "I didn't want to believe…even after you came back, part of me…didn't dare to believe. I thought Cerberus might…might _change_ you, make a copy, a clone, even though they promised they wouldn't. But…it really _is_ you. You're _really_ here."

"I'm really here, Tianlán," Shepard replied, lifting her hand and taking Liara's, before she gave a weak, lopsided grin. "In all my foul-mouthed, ass-kicking, blues-loving glory."

Liara half-laughed, half-sobbed in relief as she hugged Shepard tightly again, letting the tears fall. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered. The Broker was dead, Feron was safe, and she had her Del back.

The nightmare was finally over.

* * *

><p>"Why is it that everyone managed to get a wall to the head, except Liara?" Chakwas asked, running the scanner over Shepard's skull. The med-bay on the Broker ship was small but very advanced…more advanced than some elite hospitals on Thessia. Setting foot within it was, for Chakwas, akin to a kid walking in a candy store. It was a pity she couldn't stay.<p>

"To be fair," Shepard replied. "Garrus got a desk to the face, not a wall to the head."

"One day I wish I could come with you on one of your missions. See first-hand the inexplicable ways you people manage to get yourselves injured. There you are. One minor concussion, all better."

"How's the drell?" Shepard asked, rubbing the much smaller bump on her head.

"Dehydrated, exhausted. There is some small amount of neural and nerve damage from repeated jolts of electricity but nothing permanently disabling. The Broker was careful to inflict pain but no lasting harm. Physically, anyway."

Shepard nodded, looking past her to where Feron was sitting near the corner, Liara standing nearby and holding his hand. The two seemed intent in conversation.

"Thanks, Doc," Shepard murmured, rising and moving past her, heading over to the pair.

When Feron glanced her direction, Shepard nodded politely. Liara smiled slightly, then gestured. "Shepard, this is Feron. Feron, _this_ is Commander Shepard."

Something strange passed through the drell's eyes. A mix of disbelief, awe perhaps, and some measure of…sadness? It was an odd look, and Shepard wasn't familiar enough with his race to truly interpret it. He reached out a hand, and Shepard took it with a nod.

"My honor, Feron," she greeted.

"No," Feron replied. His voice sounded younger than she had expected, a gentle tenor. He folded his other hand over their clasped hands, looking at her intently. "No, the honor is _mine_, Commander."

Shepard cleared her throat awkwardly. "Well, um…thanks. Uh…Liara tells me that you…helped her out a couple of years ago. That whole mess with my um…yes. Well. Thank you, Feron. I appreciate what you did."

"It was the right thing to do," he replied, releasing her hand with a nod. "Though Liara was determined enough. She would have found a way, even without my aide."

"Yeah, she is kind of stubborn."

"I wonder where I learned _that_ from?" Liara hedged gently. Shepard smirked, then nodded at the drell.

"It was nice to meet you. I…need to steal Dr. T'Soni for a moment. If you'll excuse us?"

"Of course."

Lightly taking the asari's arm, Shepard steered her over near the door, where they could speak unheard. "Are you sure you're ok?" she asked gently.

"I am fine, Shepard. A…bit shell-shocked, still adjusting to the fact that it's all over but…yes. I am fine."

"The _Normandy_ will be staying in solar orbit for a bit," Shepard told her. "A day at least, maybe two…until we get all this mess figured out. I've got to head back on board, get some things squared away. Not the least of which is I need a serious shower. I…imagine you'll want to stay here, talk to your friend…get a grasp on things?"

Liara nodded, then caught Shepard's hand, looking at her eyes. "We…_do_ need to talk."

"I know," Shepard said softly, then rubbed the back of her neck. "Why don't you come up later tonight, after things have settled down? You hardly got the best look at the _Normandy_ from the medi-bay and we can…you know, eat. And talk."

Liara smiled faintly. "I would like that."

"_Good_. Good, then I'll see you in a few hours."

Giving Liara's hand a squeeze she cleared her throat again, offering the asari woman a final smile before she turned and headed out of the infirmary.


	29. Chapter 29

A/N: Again, slight changes to canon because…well, that's what I do. Standard 'beware the shmexy' and all that. Bladhaire, I can see you grinning from here. Behave.

* * *

><p>When he felt the hand land on his shoulder, Joker grinned, looking up at the asari standing there.<p>

"Hey, you," he greeted, getting carefully to his feet before hugging her. "It's good to see you."

"It is good to see you again too, Joker," Liara replied, hugging him back. "I am sorry that we did not have a chance to talk the last time I was aboard."

"Eh, bullet wounds will do that," he replied, releasing her. "Hey, EDI, let the commander know Liara's aboard, will ya?"

"Of course, Jeff."

Joker lifted his cap, scrubbing a hand over his hair before setting it back into place, clearing his throat. "Look, Liara…I'm…a bit surprised that you _are_ happy to see me. After what happened, I figured the least I'd get would be another broken nose."

Liara blinked slightly. "Shepard broke your nose?"

"Yeah," he chuckled. "Guess it's not too surprising, considering what…what happened. What I did…"

"Joker, I will admit…I spent a very long time being very angry with you," Liara told him. "But I also _forgave_ you a long time ago. You are my friend, and Shepard trusts you. It was a mistake, and as far as I am concerned, it is in the past."

He nodded his head. Sometimes it didn't feel so 'in the past'. He still had nightmares, sometimes. Still hated himself for it. "I'm not _entirely_ sure that's true," he said. "Shepard trusting me, I mean."

"Joker, if she did not trust you, you would not be at the helm of this ship," Liara pointed out.

"Yeah, I guess so. Oh, hey…I had something I wanted to give you."

He dug into his pocket, taking out a small 3D photo-pad. As he held it out he said, "I knew Shepard would find you sooner or later. Figured this won't make up for what I did but…well, I wanted you to have it. Guard it close. I doubt you'll ever get another one and if Shepard gets hold of it there won't be anything left but atoms."

Curious, Liara held the pad in her palm and activated it. A holographic image of a woman appeared, hovering over her palm and standing about six inches in height. For a moment, Liara blinked in confusion, before her eyes widened.

"This is _Shepard_?"

"Yeah, hard to believe, huh?" he grinned. "She dolled up to help Kasumi with some undercover heist at a dress party. Never thought I'd see the commander in a dress, let alone heels."

Liara could only stare a moment, prompting Joker to smirk and nudge her slightly, teasing. "Hey, Doctor…might want to watch that. I think you're drooling."

She looked at him with a baleful smirk, switching the pad off and then slipping it into her pocket. "Thank you, Joker. I will treasure it."

"You're welcome, Li," he smiled, then glanced over. "Speak of the devil, here she comes. Hey, listen…if you guys act out any scenes from _Vaenia_, make sure you record it. You know, for posterity's sake and all."

"From…_what_?" Liara blinked, confused as Shepard walked up, eyeing her pilot.

"Joker, you behaving yourself?" she asked. He straightened and saluted.

"Of course, ma'am," he replied. "Liara and I were just catching up, ma'am."

"At ease," she ordered him, still suspicious. "And get your _tun_ back to work."

"Yes ma'am," he grinned, lowering his hand and nodding at Liara. "It was good to see you again. Don't be a stranger, ok?"

"I…will not be," Liara replied. She still did not have a real grasp on the odd idioms humans liked to spout, but she'd learned that usually the best reaction was simply to agree.

Shepard's commander rank seemed to melt away as her gaze returned to Liara. That stern, stiff, professional edge in her eyes vanished, making her face softer somehow as she smiled. "Thank you for coming," she said, before offering her hand. "Why don't I show you around?"

"I would like that," Liara smiled in return, taking the hand in her own. As the pair started down toward the CIC, Liara noted something.

"You are not in uniform?"

"I'm not Alliance anymore," Shepard told her. "At least, not at the moment. Spectres don't have uniforms and since it'll be a _seriously_ fucking cold day in hell before I wear one from Cerberus…"

She shrugged lightly, her free hand drifting self-consciously over the stomach of her shirt. Liara, seeing the gesture, shook her head. "I did not mean to imply that you do not look nice," she said. "It is simply…strange. I was so used to seeing you in uniform unless you were off-duty."

They crossed the CIC, Shepard introducing her to Kelly and a few of the others, before taking her through the armory and the tech lab. Liara seemed ever so slightly taken aback by Mordin at first, as most people did given the man's nature ; hyperactive, even for a Salarian. She did thank him for his helping to save her life, which seemed to please him.

They went then down to the crew deck, Shepard standing back a little as Liara spoke with Dr. Chakwas and Garrus, old friends to whom she naturally gravitated. Kasumi appeared from apparently nowhere, standing by Shepard's shoulder and murmuring to her.

"So, I take it we can stop looking for her?" the thief teased gently. Shepard smirked.

"Yeah, I think we're past that now."

"Hmm." Kasumi measured the asari a moment as if contemplating a shiny new omni-tool upgrade. "I wasn't able to say this back on Ilium, what with all the running and shooting and then her being wounded and all…and not that I play on that particular _team_, mind, but…not _bad_ Shepard. You dog you."

"Watch it Goto," Shepard teased right back.

"Does she know you dressed up in heels for me?" Kasumi asked with a chuckle.

"Don't make me send you back to your room."

"Like you could _keep_ me there." Lifting her hand, she gave Shepard's shoulder a light squeeze before she turned to head back to the observation room. "I'm glad you found her."

"Yeah," Shepard murmured softly in reply. "Me too."

* * *

><p>"If I haven't thanked you yet for the booze, let me thank you now," Shepard smirked as she tipped the bottle of pris para against Liara's glass again, filling it before she refilled her own. The detritus of dinner…cooked by Rupert but actually somewhat edible, thank heavens…was scattered around.<p>

"You are welcome," Liara answered, picking up her glass. Asari did not get drunk as easily as most humans did, and she seemed completely sober even after her third glass of the strong libation. Shepard, who _could_ hold her liquor, was still feeling a rather pleasant buzz.

Taking a sip, Liara set the glass aside, before looking at Shepard. "Your ship is beautiful," she said. "And it was very good to see old friends again. I mean, in less _tense_ circumstances."

Shepard nodded, her eyes vaguely troubled as she watched the shimmering green and yellow shift in her glass as she swirled it. She disliked remembering that just days ago, Liara had been laying on top of a hotel on Ilium, dying right in front of her eyes.

"Are you all right?" Liara asked softly, seeing the look. Shepard blinked, then nodded.

"Yeah, I'm ok," she said. Liara didn't look like she quite believed her, but didn't press.

"I…brought you something," she said almost timidly. Shepard set her glass down as Liara reached into her pocket, gingerly drawing out a folded piece of paper. Shepard realized what it was instantly, even as Liara held it out to her.

Taking it as if it would fall apart the moment it was touched, Shepard carefully unfolded it. A list of names was written there, scrawled in her own hand. Turning it over, Shepard felt her eyes heat a little as she looked at the oh-so-familiar crayon sketches of herself and Paul, hands linked under plasters of sunshine yellow that declared them bestust buds forever.

"H-how did you get this?" Shepard asked softly as she tried to hide the tremor in her voice.

"During the attack," Liara murmured, her voice no less soft. "After you left the room I…was getting dressed, nearly fell. My hand landed on it when I caught myself…it was just instinct to grab it. I didn't even think, didn't realize I had until later, on the _Seattle_…"

She was not hiding the tremor in her own voice nearly as well. Shepard looked up to her, seeing those sky blue eyes gloss with tears. "Li…"

The asari rose, pacing away a few steps, her hands lifting to clasp under her chin as her head bowed. Shepard immediately stood as well, setting the picture carefully aside before she went over. Resting her hands on Liara's shoulders, she felt the woman shudder a little.

"Tianlán…?"

"Goddess," Liara whispered, her voice thick. "Shepard…you _died_…"

Shepard said nothing, only slid her arms around her companion, resting her chin on Liara's shoulder as she held her close.

After a long moment of silence, Liara spoke again, her voice a bit more steady. "When I saw Joker get off of that lifeboat without you...I felt like I would fall apart. Ashley helped keep me strong, told me there was still hope but…there was not. When Hackett confirmed…I wanted to die too, Shepard."

"Liara…" Shepard whispered, wincing a little as she thought about how much grief everyone had gone through.

Liara turned in her arms, wrapping her own around the human woman's waist as she rest her head on her shoulder. The smell of shampoo and cigars was strong…a smell she had missed, a smell she wanted to wrap herself in and forget the rest of the galaxy even existed.

"So much has happened since then. I fought so hard, clung so tightly to hope and grief and…_vengeance_. I do not know how to let go of it. And I do not know if you…if you and I…"

Shepard loosened her arms a little as Liara drew back, looking at her face. "Th-that kiss, on the Broker base. I…emotions were high, adrenaline…I am sorry, I-"

"_I'm_ not," Shepard insisted. "Liara, it's been two years for you…I know that. But for me, it's only been a couple of _months_. I was on the _Normandy _and then I was in that station, weak and confused…I had no idea what had happened. People kept telling me I'd been killed, that everyone had moved on. My whole life was stripped away so completely and… all I could think was that you were in trouble, that I had to find _you_, make sure you were ok. Liara, nothing has changed in how I feel about you. Not a goddamn _thing_."

When Liara said nothing, only lowering her eyes, Shepard nodded slightly. "I understand if you_…_ I just want you happy. I know that you said...that you said that you didn't want me to leave but I _would_ understand, Liara. I just want you to be happy, even if it's without me."

Liara shook her head. "It is not that…I…Shepard, I am just…_terrified_…"

"Terrified?"

"I lost you, Shepard, and it nearly destroyed me. If I had not even had the slightest hope in Cerberus's promise to bring you back, I do not know what I would have done. It is a darkness I do not wish to return to, but…you _are_ going to leave me again."

"Tianlán…"

"This mission, the Collectors and the Reapers…tell me that there is not the overwhelming chance that you will not return from it? _No one_ has gone through the Omega Four Relay and returned. I know that you cannot stop hunting them, even had they not taken Nan. So many people hurt…you cannot turn away from that any more than you can change the color of your eyes. I know you, Shepard. You will _always_ fight for the lost. But this mission…if you and your crew survive it, it will be a miracle."

"There's a _chance_, Li. There is _always_ a chance. People told me it was impossible to stop what was happening on Torfan, but I did. They told me I couldn't reach Ilos, couldn't stop Sovereign and the geth…but I _did_. And I _will_ do this. If there is _any way_ in this godforsaken galaxy, I will chase the Collectors wherever they go, even into that relay…and I _will_ find our people and come home again."

"And if there is _not_ a way?" Liara pressed slightly, her brows knit. "You are strong, and stubborn, and I have seen you accomplish things that I _still_ cannot believe even though I was _there_, but you are _not_ the Goddess, Shepard. Even if you do somehow manage to do this…and if _anyone_ could, it would be you…there are still the Reapers, still a thousand different threats that can appear, things no one can predict. And no matter how hard you fight or how many battles you win, there is still the inevitable. You are human, and I am asari. You will age…grow old, and eventually…you _will_ leave me again."

Shepard shook her head, taking Liara's shoulders. "No…_that _is a trap," she said. "No one can know what will happen. Liara, I saw you _shot_ on top of that hotel. I was terrified that I was going to lose you. _That_ can happen again as well. An accident, a fight…you are asari but you are not immortal, not impervious. Do you think that I'm not afraid you might be taken away from _me_, too? Yeah, I may get supremely fucking lucky and live to be a hundred and fifty and die old and gray in my bed while you have to live on. Or the most horrific thing could happen and _I_ could end up burying _you_…struggling to find a way to carry on without you there. Maybe we could even die together, at the same time…the point is we don't _know_. What I _do_ know is that I want to be with you, Liara. For an hour, for a century…for however long we have left, _I don't care_. I'm _not_ gonna lose you just because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose you."

A tear spilled down the asari's cheek, and Shepard brushed it away gently with a thumb. "Galaxy isn't safe, dong ma?" she murmured. "Yeah…there are horrible things coming. Yeah, I _have _to fight them, and I may not come back from it. But with _you_ I have a _reason_ to fight. The galaxy is too fucking big, Tianlán…it's too _big_ a thing to fight for all on its own. So I'll fight for _you_, and if the galaxy gets saved in the process…well, then that's good too."

* * *

><p>Liara lifted her hands, cupping the woman's cheeks, fingertips sliding into her soft hair as she leaned her forehead against Shepard's. She was right, of course. They could not sacrifice their lives because of fear. Liara had fought so hard for Shepard, and she would keep fighting because she knew that Shepard would never stop. Her tenacity was one of the things Liara loved most about her.<p>

Loved. Yes, _love_. That's what this was, as if Liara could ever have doubted it. Love was worth fighting for, risking for. And if the Goddess saw fit to take either Shepard or her away, whether it was in a day or a century, then at the very least Liara wasn't going to waste a moment of the time that they _did_ have.

She was _done_ with regret.

The kiss was as passionate as it was inevitable. Liara clung to Shepard tightly, possessively, trying to pour everything she felt into it, trying to convey in the most blunt terms the answer to Shepard's unasked questions.

It seemed an eternity before it broke, both of them panting slightly. Shepard's hand was pressed at the small of Liara's back, only stoking the fire already ignited.

Breathlessly Liara whispered, "Be with me."

"Try and stop me," Shepard growled back softly, smiling a little before the kiss was rejoined.

As they reached the bedside, Liara's eyes shifted to obsidian, seeking out and then joining the commander's gaze. As two souls merged into one, both seemed to tremble in relief.

Nothing else mattered. They were finally _home_.

* * *

><p>Blue eyes shimmered slightly, reflecting the yellow of her console's HI and the images playing in front of her. Sound was muted but still audible, the mics good enough to pick up even the faintest drop of a pin.<p>

"_Galaxy isn't safe, dong ma?" she murmured. "Yeah…there are horrible things coming. Yeah, I __**have**__ to fight them, and I may not come back from it. But with __**you**__ I have a __**reason**__ to fight. The galaxy is too_ _fucking big, Tianlán…it's too __**big**__ a thing to fight for all on its own. So I'll fight for __**you**__, and if the galaxy gets saved in the process…well, then that's good too."_

As the two forms standing close together on the image suddenly closed the distance, Miranda glanced away, blinking rapidly and a bit surprised to find her eyelashes were damp. Reaching out she cleared the video feed, then selected all the cameras and mics linking to the commander's room, powering them down, completely privatizing the room. It was against protocol, of course, but _this_ was no one's business but their own.

* * *

><p>Lips pressed against sweat-dampened skin as Shepard lightly kissed Liara's speeding pulse. Her own heart was racing, both women struggling to catch their breath, to adjust to that separation, that feeling of spiritual aloneness once again. Liara's trembling gasps against her ear were sweeter music than Opus Ori or Flatwood had ever produced.<p>

Laying side by side facing each other, legs still tangled, neither woman felt the urge to sleep. Though by rights they both should have been exhausted, neither dozed. Liara's fingers were tangled in Shepard's hair as the human woman stroked the folds of her crest, lightly peppering her lips with slow kisses.

"You have new scars," the asari murmured sadly, her own fingertips trailing down from the strands of black to Shepard's neck, thumb softly brushing over the three-inch line there.

Shepard said nothing, knowing that Liara knew the cause of that scar, and the ones on her hand. Given the basic natureof a Joining meld as opposed to a simple knowledge meld, images and memories, thoughts and sensations all tended to blur a bit into a kind of chaos…a chaos displayed before rather distracted minds. The memories were there, however, and even as she commented on the scar, Shepard could see the recollection of that vaguely seen memory return to Liara's eyes, darkening the sky blue sadly.

"Don't," she murmured, taking the asari's hand and kissing her fingers. "It's over with. Nothing I didn't handle just fine."

Liara nodded, pulling Shepard closer and burrowing her face in against her throat, softly kissing that mark. Shifting a little so that she was laying on her back, Liara cradled against her, Shepard looked upward through the open skyport, watching the stars.

"What do you see, when you look up there?" Liara asked, turning her eyes that direction as well. Shepard traced patterns on the asari's shoulder as she frowned thoughtfully.

"I don't know," she mused a moment later. "Little house on a green planet somewhere…Thessia, maybe, or Eden Prime. Someone special to live there with me. Lots of little blue daughters."

Liara giggled, lightly pinching Shepard's arm. "You're teasing me," she smiled.

Shepard grinned. "You're right. Aria doesn't strike me as the kind to settle down, anyway."

"Ooh!" Liara sniffed in mock indignation, giving Shepard a bit of a sharper pinch. "_Incorrigible_."

Shepard laughed softly, hugging Liara closer. "You wouldn't like me if I was corrigible, anyway."

The asari hummed happily, warm and comfortable, happier than she had been in a very long time. "Shepard," she ventured after a moment. "Did you mean that? You want to have a family with me?"

"I don't know," Shepard said honestly. "I meant the part where I want to _be_ with you…make some kind of a life with you, if…you know, I ever end up leading anything even _resembling_ a normal life. Kids though…I…I don't know. I don't know if I'd make a very good…you know, mother, or sire…parent."

Liara moved until she could look down into Shepard's eyes. "Truly?" she asked, brows knit. "I think you would make a wonderful parent, Shepard. You are devoted, courageous, kind and sweet-"

"Kind and sweet?" Shepard scoffed lightly. "You have _met_ me, haven't you?"

"I know more about you than anyone else in existence," Liara said firmly. "You _are_ kind and sweet, however much armor you put between it and the world. Though, you might have to curb your more colorful language if you are around children."

Shepard snorted, grinning. "Fuck that bullshit," she teased, then shook her head. "I just don't know, Li. I hardly had the best examples growing up. I wouldn't even know where to _start_ with a kid."

"You had Nan," Liara reminded her, lightly brushing some hair back from her forehead. "It doesn't matter right now, Shepard. It will be quite some time before daughters are even a consideration. We are just finding each other again as it is. No matter what happens, we will decide it together when the time comes."

"Deal," Shepard smiled, lifting her head a little to kiss her. It took little time for the affectionate gesture to turn deeper, heat starting to rise once again between them. Holding her tightly, Shepard's lips sought out Liara's neck as she murmured, "That really gets me wanting to _practice_ more, however," she teased.

"Save me from insatiable humans," Liara smiled, breathless, already feeling her eyes shifting to black. They made love again, and as they lay still afterward, once more tangled together, sleep finally let its heavy grasp be felt. Shepard's breathing had grown deep and even and Liara was just about to fade away as well when she leaned forward and whispered in the human's ear, saying those words she had once started to say before her entire life came falling down.

"_I love you, Del Shepard_."

Shepard only made a faint humming sound in reply. Smiling wearily, Liara held her close, and fell away from time for a while.

* * *

><p>No matter how late the night or how exhausted or drunk she might be at the start of it, the marine in Shepard always woke up right on time. Moving carefully, she managed to extricate herself from the sleeping asari without waking her. Padding into the bathroom she switched on the shower and stepped under the flow of hot water, eyes closed and thoughts chasing each other in an endless swirl.<p>

Only a minute later she heard the bathroom door slide open again, before the shower door did as well. She didn't turn as Liara stepped into the shower behind her, sliding her arms around Shepard's waist and resting her cheek against the back of her shoulder.

Folding her own arms over Liara's, she murmured, "Sorry, I tried not to wake you."

"I have a lifetime to sleep, Shepard," Liara replied. Turning, Shepard hugged her close, the two standing beneath the hot water in silence for a long time.

"We…need to leave, in a couple of hours," Shepard said reluctantly. "There's still so much to do…"

"You need to get Nan back," Liara nodded against her shoulder.

"I need to _try_. Honestly, I don't even know that there's hope she's alive any more, not after this long."

"There is always hope," Liara replied, lifting her head and looking into Shepard's brown eyes. "We will stay in constant contact. I will help you in any way that I can. All the Broker's resources are yours. Anything you need."

"I know," Shepard murmured. "I wish I could ask you to stay on board…"

"I need to do this, Shepard. This is the best way that I can help make sure you come back to me alive."

"It's all right. I wouldn't ask you to stay anyway…unfair as it may sound, I _need_ to know that you're safe, out of the line of fire…just for a while. I can face anything right now so long as I know that you're all right, that you're not in the path of any more bullets."

Liara nodded and held her again, the pair swaying slightly under the warm rain of the shower as if dancing to music only they could hear.

* * *

><p>Dried and dressed, Shepard cleaned up the remains of their meal last night as Liara finished dressing and fussed with straightening up the bed. They worked in comfortable silence for a bit, each content with their own thoughts, before Liara finally spoke.<p>

"You miss her."

"Hmm? Who?" Shepard asked, recapping what was left of the pris para and stacking plates. "Nan?"

"Well, yes, I know that you miss _her_," Liara stated, tugging pillow cases square. "But I was talking about the other one. The one with the yellow hair…the one from your N7 training. Her name was…Sydney?"

Shepard blinked, taken off-guard a moment as she stared at Liara, then returned her attention to the dishes, her jaw tight. "Blonde," she stated.

"I am sorry?"

"Yellow hair. Humans call it 'blonde'."

"Interesting, and completely off-track of my question," Liara replied. "Shepard, I am asking out of concern. I am not jealous-"

"There's no reason to be," Shepard replied sternly. "You're talking ancient news. Rasler is ancient news. Old and buried."

"I did not mean to bring up something painful," Liara said, walking over and catching Shepard's hands, holding them in her own. "She made me curious, that is all. You hold yourself so closed off, so guarded sometimes. Even with me, at first, you were distant. I was simply surprised to find that I…wasn't the first that had your heart, that is all. I saw no memory of what happened to her, why she is no longer in your life but her image brought some nostalgia, some sense of loss. I knew that you missed her."

Shepard shook her head, looking down at their hands. "Kelly asked about her," she admitted. "Few days ago. I hadn't thought about Rasler in years but Kelly asked…not _directly_ about her, of course. We were talking about you and she wanted to know if there had ever been…you know. Someone else. Guess that stirred everything up a bit. Like I said, it's old news. I was young and stupid and she was…_blonde_."

She gave a little smirk, then leaned forward and kissed Liara's forehead. "I had stars in my eyes, that's all. There's a thousand and one stories just like it across the whole galaxy. It's just a fond memory. I don't have many so I have to keep tight hold on the ones I do."

Remembering something she released Liara's hands, stepping around her. "Oh, hey…I had something I wanted to give to you, as well."

Picking up her discarded jeans from the night before, she dug in the pocket, taking something out before she walked back over to the asari. Taking her hand, she folded the engraved metal tabs into her palm, winding the chain around her fingers.

Liara stared in disbelief. "These…these are your dog tags! I thought I had lost these on Azure!"

"No, Dr. Chakwas took them off of you when they were patching you up. She gave them to me. I was kind of shocked to see them."

"Operative Lawson was able to retrieve them intact," Liara told her. "They had been protected by the breastplate of your hard-suit. She sent them to me. It was…an unexpected gesture."

Taking the tags back Shepard opened the chain and re-hung them around Liara's neck. "There, now they're back where they belong."

"No, Shepard…these are yours," Liara protested. "I know how important they are to a marine, and-"

"Li, _take_ them," Shepard insisted. "Hold them for me for a while. That way you know I'll be coming back…for them _and_ for you."

Liara nodded slightly, her eyes misting before she hugged Shepard tightly again. "Just be sure you _always_ come back."

* * *

><p>Miranda entered the cargo bay as the shuttle locked down, engines dying. As Shepard emerged, having just finished dropping Liara back off at Hagalaz, Miranda nodded, approaching and then falling in to step beside her.<p>

"The ship is prepared for departure," she reported. "I believe you wanted to go to Korlus?"

Shepard nodded. "Warlord Okeer is the next on my list. According to the dossier Korlus was the last place he was spotted. Sounds kind of interesting…a krogan warlord _and_ scientist. The only other krogan scientist I met I put bullets in before we were properly introduced."

"Oh yes, on Virmire," Miranda recalled. "I can direct Joker to put in our course to Korlus. I…the Illusive Man would like to have a word with you."

Shepard paused, eyeing her XO. "You told him."

"Of course," Miranda replied. "I do not hide from my decisions, Shepard. He would have found out very quickly anyway. I felt full disclosure was the best option. Earned me quite a dressing down but I stand by my decision. At any rate, he wants to speak with you."

"Oh, I have a few words for _him_, too," Shepard said with a glower, before she shook her head. "Listen…_thank_ you, Miranda. What you did…you saved Liara's life, and gave us both a reason to hope again."

"And you did the same for me and my sister, Shepard. As I said, it was the right call to make. Everything we're asking of you, everything we're putting you through, I think you deserve a few small considerations."

"I don't know that I'd categorize this as a 'small' consideration, but you have my gratitude."

She offered her hand, and after a moment, Miranda tentatively reached out and took it. "It was my honor, Commander," she murmured, then cleared her throat. "I'll get us en route to Korlus. The Illusive Man will be waiting whenever you're ready."

Shepard watched her first officer go before nodding to herself. Yes, she had more than a few words for the Illusive Man, and she didn't doubt that a lot of them he wasn't going to like.

_Fucker better not think he can treat me like an Alliance captain reprimanding an FNG, or my next mission will be to find him in his pretentious little shiny room and introduce his teeth to my boot._


	30. Chapter 30

"Commander Shepard, I understand your anger, and you do have my apologies-"

"You lied to _me_ and you lied to _Liara_. You tried to manipulate us both to keep us apart and for _what_? Did you honestly fucking think you could control me like a puppet, that I'd be your goddamn toy to jump at every snap of your fingers?"

"If that were true, Shepard, I would have implanted you with a control chip," the man replied coolly, regarding the hologram hovering before him. "I made a judgment call. We could not be sure where Dr. T'Soni's loyalties really lay and this mission is too important to risk petty distractions. However it has become clear that my judgment in this case was incorrect. Miranda made some very good points on your behalf and it is evident now that having you and Dr. T'Soni working together is best all around. You did an exceptional job assisting her in bringing down the Shadow Broker, and her new contacts and information network will be invaluable in the days to come."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Let me make one thing abundantly clear. Liara and her ship are _not_ Cerberus property. She is helping me, _not_ you."

"She is helping humanity by helping you," he pointed out. "That's enough for me."

"You've already proven I can't believe a thing that comes out of your mouth so I shall make this even _plainer_. If I so much as _think_ a Cerberus uniform outside of this so-called Lazarus Cell has come within three systems of Hagalaz and Liara I will personally _hunt you down_. And this promise stands, today, tomorrow, and even _after_ we stop the Collectors and the Reapers and I have shaken your mud off my boots. Stay. Away. From. _Liara_."

He let out a stream of smoke, his expression unreadable. "Understood, Shepard," he replied after a moment. "Miranda tells me you are heading to Korlus, to pick up Dr. Okeer. I look forward to reading the successful mission report when you are finished."

* * *

><p>Shepard glared as the hologram around her faded away, the Illusive Man having terminated the call. She didn't trust the fucker one bit. Oh, he'd leave Liara alone so long as she was proving valuable to Shepard and the mission, but once that was done…once Shepard had given the fucker the tail-lights, she had no doubt Hagalaz would be at the top of the Illusive Man's 'to-do' list.<p>

_That's a bridge you'll have to jump off when the time comes. For now, you gotta get your head back together and get back in the saddle._

Heading out of the conference room she took the lift down to Engineering. The metal steps to the maintenance access area were still just as loud under her boots as they had been before. She paused near the bottom, sitting down and lighting a cigar, smoking as she tried not to brood.

"What the fuck are you doing?" A voice interrupted her thoughts. She glanced up, spotting Jack leaning on the wall nearby, watching her with a scowl. Shepard had just wanted somewhere quiet to smoke and think…she'd all but forgotten the biotic was lurking down there.

"Smoking," she grumped in response. Jack's glare only sharpened.

"I can see that," she sniped. "Why the fuck are you doing it on my deck?"

"Funny, I thought this was _my_ fucking _ship_," Shepard replied.

"Yeah, well…I gotta live down here, and I'd rather not smell your shit-ass cigars."

Shepard was in no mood. The air filters on the ship snatched the cigar smoke and bore it away before any of it could linger, so there really was no danger of any odor sticking around. Jack was used to people backing down under her temper, insults, and overall freak-ass scariness, and she was just pushing, trying to see what she could get away with.

Shepard only glared and pointedly continued to smoke. Jack flapped her hand with a sharp, 'what the fuck ever', and strode back out of sight, heading to the bunk area near the base of the engine core. After a moment, Shepard rose and followed her.

"You finish reading those reports?" she asked, gesturing at the data pad sitting on the cot. Jack shot her a look, then nodded.

"Most of 'em," she said.

"Find anything?"

"Lots of shit," Jack said. "Names, dates, places."

"Cerberus really fucked you over, did they?"

"You could say that," Jack retorted. "They raised me in a lab facility. Did experiments, put me through torture, turned me into the lovely, sweet paragon of fucking righteousness you see before you. Your friends are into some twisted shit, Shepard."

"Watch who you're calling my 'friend'," Shepard warned.

"Or what? You'll smoke me to death?" Jack smirked. "Hate to break it to you, Shepard, but you're in bed with Cerberus, fucking their brains out. You're a blind, stupid, self-righteous little Alliance pussy who likes to delude herself into thinking she's in control."

That was the second time Jack had called Shepard a pussy. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, that's so," Jack retorted. "I know about you, Shepard. Government hero, you think your shit don't stink. You can use a gun, took out a few geth and shit and had some medals pinned to you, so now you think you're some kind of bad-ass big-shot. I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you have no idea what _real_ pain and suffering is."

"Huh." Shepard scrubbed the end of her cigar out on the wall, looking askance at the other woman. "You know, Jack, I think it's time you started earning your paycheck. We're going to be on Korlus in a couple hours. I expect you locked and loaded and ready to go dirt-side when we get there."

Jack laughed with a snort. "Fuck, Shepard. You don't even defend yourself when someone insults you?"

"I'd have to care, first," Shepard replied. "Now, you gonna be dirt-side or am I putting you off my fucking ship the next time we hit Omega?"

"Don't worry," Jack smirked. "I'll go with you. Someone's gotta protect your pretty, lily-white little ass from all the big bad thugs. Wouldn't want you to break a _nail_."

* * *

><p>The glass shimmered with the nutrient fluid behind it, a slow and languid shift of light and shadow that made the serene krogan face seem oddly surreal.<p>

She had seen tubes like this before, on Virmire. Glass coffins she'd shattered with gunfire, slaughtering their contents decisively and without remorse. Some of the krogan within those had been little more than children, but would have grown into mindless meat-puppets bent to Saren's will.

This boy looked like an adolescent, if a very big one.

_He's going to be a monster in size…if he ever grows up_, Shepard noted, watching the way his head gently bobbed to the current flowing around him.

"Well _that_ was a fucking waste of time," Jack sniffed, her arms folded as she glared at the dead warlord at her feet. Shepard looked from the tank to Okeer, his eyes still bulging, tongue lolling. The gas Jedore had flooded the labs with had killed him fast but not gently.

"What are we going to do with it?" Kasumi asked, also eyeing the tank and its unconscious contents.

"Why do we have to do _anything_ with it?" Jack wanted to know. "You saw the other krogan. They were totally bug-fuck. So was Okeer if you ask me. Just dump it. Power it off. Let it die. It's useless."

"No, he said this one was different," Shepard murmured.

"Don't go all bleeding heart," Jack said bitterly. "This thing is a waste."

"I'm not entirely convinced of that," Shepard replied, then activated her radio. "_Normandy_, this is Shepard."

_{We got you loud and clear, Commander,}_ Miranda responded.

"We have the facility secure. Bring the ship down and have Mordin meet us in the main lab, along with an extraction team."

_{Understood, we'll be on the ground in ten.}_

Jack sniffed again, perching herself up on Okeer's desk with a flippant wave of her hand. "Whatever."

Shepard removed her helmet, going to the console and starting to peruse the data. She didn't understand half of it, of course…that would be for Mordin to translate. Shepard had never been one for chemistry, biology, or genetics. What little attention she paid to anatomy was to simply find more efficient ways to put an enemy on the goddamn ground. Still, it was a bit fascinating.

Kasumi, poking about herself, wandered over to the desk and plucked up Okeer's spare omni-tool. As she accessed it, Jack eyed her. "So what the fuck is _your_ deal, anyway?"

"My deal?" Kasumi asked, glancing up at her.

"Why the fuck do you listen to _her_?" she gestured over at Shepard, who was out of ear-shot. "You're smart, right? Sneaky. You take what you want. She's just some pussy Alliance hero who won't even stand up for herself. Why listen to her?"

"We're…talking about the same Commander Shepard, right?" Kasumi asked, confused.

"Yeah, the bitch over there," Jack said angrily, gesturing at Shepard's back. "Likes to pretend she's a bad ass, that she's all buddy-buddy? She's an ok shot, I'll give her that, and she held her own against those mercs and krogan and shit but…fuck. If she ever saw the inside of a prison, she'd fold. She'd be pissing herself in an hour."

"I highly doubt that," Kasumi answered. "You've got her figured wrong, Jack."

"Do I?" Jack asked sarcastically. "If she was in serious shit the moment she stubbed her toe she'd be whining like a stuck pig and begging for her life. Convince me that's not true."

"You know what meat-hooks are?" Kasumi asked, idly thumbing through the omni-tool's files.

Jack glowered. "Yeah, had them on a time or two. I'd like to skin whatever twisted fuck came up with _that_ design."

"Yeah, so would Shepard," Kasumi smirked.

"Shepard's had meat-hooks on," Jack scoffed in sarcastic disbelief.

"Check out her left wrist sometime. Scars speak for themselves. In fact, you may find that there's really not that much difference between you and Shepard when you get down to it."

"Bullshit."

Kasumi shrugged. "I really don't care if you believe me or not. It's not my job to convince you of anything."

Drifting away from the con, she went over to Shepard's side and showed her some of the info she'd found from the omni-tool. Jack scowled after her, not moving from her spot on the desk until the _Normandy_ team arrived, Mordin and Miranda at their head.

The salarian peered with intense interest at the young krogan in the tank, swiftly filing through the data that Shepard had accessed.

"Fascinating! Basis of research brilliant…but deliberately flawed. Okeer tried to compensate, much trial and error. Finally incorporated Collector technology, compensated for altered genetic tech-"

"Deliberately flawed?" Shepard asked.

"Yes. Basic research not Okeer's, probably purchased. Black-market intel, scientist seeking quick profit. Research deliberately flawed, however…sabotage perhaps. Strong similarity between original process data and data retrieved from base on Virmire." He took a contemplative breath. "Same geneticist."

"Same geneticist," Shepard echoed.

"The research on Virmire belonged to Dr. Droyas," Miranda stated. "He and Okeer share no known connection."

"Not quite," Shepard reminded her. "Droyas called in help, remember? It was Osco that corrected the flaws in his work and paved the way for viable subjects. The basic genetics work was _hers,_ not Droyas'."

"Osco?" Jack suddenly piped up, jumping off the desk and striding over with a black look. "Did you say Osco?"

"Yeah, Gellian Osco," Shepard replied. "Means something to you?"

"That bitch was in charge of the project that experimented on me," Jack shot. "Her name was in the files. I didn't remember her until I saw her picture…Osco was _here_?"

"Doubtful. Simply sold research. No reason to believe she ever set foot here," Mordin shook his head. As Shepard looked at Miranda, the woman shrugged.

"Osco left Cerberus a long time ago," Miranda told her. "She was brilliant but mentally unstable, as you know. The Illusive Man did attempt to bring her back in a couple of years ago but she refused. Doubtlessly because of her personal vendetta against you, Shepard."

"We're gonna find that bitch!" Jack said hotly.

"Yeah, we get it," Shepard said sternly. "Unfortunately we have more important things on our plate than finding Osco at this exact moment-"

"_Fuck you_!" Jack snarled. "That woman kept me trapped in a room for years, and that's the _least_ of what she did to me! _You_ don't know what that's like, Shepard! We need to go after her!"

"We'll discuss it _later_!" Shepard retorted firmly, then looked at Mordin. "What's your opinion on the krogan in the t-"

She broke off as she was suddenly slapped with biotics. Far weaker than Jack was normally capable of, the blow was still enough to drop her off her feet and skid her over the floor a little. Immediately Miranda snagged the ex-con in a field of her own, the others leveling weapons at the tattooed woman.

Shepard grit her teeth, eyes sparking as she surged to her feet. Snatching off her gloves she threw them down. "All right, that's _enough_! Miranda, let her go! Weapons down, the rest of you."

"Shepard-" the Cerberus woman began, then blinked at the look on the commander's face. Lowering her hand, she let her biotics die, allowing Jack to move.

Shepard was pissed but she was not an idiot. Jack was a powerful biotic, but she was still subject to the fallacies of the flesh. Even asari could only wield biotics for so long before they exhausted themselves, and Jack had been using hers with enthusiasm ever since they landed on the planet. The fact that the slap was barely enough to knock Shepard off her feet when Jack could have put her through a wall was testament to the fact that she was about worn out.

Jack surged forward and Shepard met her, both women toe to toe and glaring in each other's faces a breath later. "I will mess you the fuck _up_, Shepard," Jack warned.

"_Try_," Shepard dared. Jack shoved her, hands wreathed in blue, the force just enough to stumble the commander back another couple of feet before she strode right back and resumed her position.

"_That _all you have?" she demanded. "Come on, Jack. _Put me off my feet_!"

Jack hit her again, and again Shepard only stumbled. Each biotic strike was weaker than the last. Once more stepping up Shepard barked directly in Jack's face.

"Come on! What's the matter with you? Biotics all you got? Make me fucking _bleed_!"

Jack let out a growl and swung her fist. Shepard took the strike on her jaw, turning her head with the blow and immediately following up with a hard roundhouse to Jack's cheek. The biotic stumbled back with a blink of surprise, then tried to swing again. Shepard landed a jab that bloodied her lip, took another belt to the chin, then rammed a fist into Jack's gut hard enough to fold the woman over, make her gasp for air. Hooking her ankle Shepard dropped Jack to the ground, kicked her over onto her belly, and pinned one wrist while snaking her arm around her neck, cutting off her air.

"Are you done?" she growled low in Jack's ear.

"_Fuck you_," Jack rasped. Shepard wrenched the arm harder, feeling bones creak.

"Are. You. _Done_?" she demanded again.

"Get off me," Jack gasped hoarsely. "Fuck you, _get off me_! Yes, I'm done!"

Rising, Shepard hauled the smaller woman to her feet, fixing her eyes sternly. "We will discuss that feng mu gou Osco _later_. _Is that understood_?"

Jack only jerked her chin in a half-nod, backhanding a trickle of blood away from her lip. Looking back at Mordin, Shepard finished her question. "What is your opinion on the tank krogan? Is he viable? Stable?"

As if nothing at all had just happened, Mordin nodded. "Further in depth analysis of genetic data would be preferable but, from cursory look at data, specimen is hearty and mentally sound. May not be friendly but…cannot have everything."

"This trip may not be a total loss then," Shepard sniffed, wiping a hand under her own lip where Jack had clipped her. "I want this tank on board, put it in the cargo hold until I decide what to do with it."

* * *

><p>"She's dangerous, Shepard," Miranda warned as they walked through the CIC. Shepard smirked at her.<p>

"So am I."

"Yes, but you are not a biotic. She _is_. And a very unstable one. If she'd been at full biotic strength-"

"I'm kind of tough to kill, Miranda, remember?"

"Yes, but you _can_ be killed. I think it was a mistake bringing her on board. Her instability, her history with Cerberus…this is going to be nothing but trouble."

"Look, I get where you're coming from, but I'm not scared of Jack," Shepard told her. "Biotics aside, she had a goddamn _gun_. She could have put a bullet in my face…she didn't even try. And I'd hardly be a decent marine if I couldn't take a punch."

"Even so-"

"Miranda, one day you're gonna have to trust me," Shepard told her. "I mean, _really_ trust me. Fuck…when you get down to it I _am_ Jack. I know what it's like to be trapped, to be hurt, to be _angry_. The only difference is I found a way to use that, funnel it, to shape it into something positive. She's never had that chance. I'll deal with Jack. You just make sure that tank is on board and plugged in."

"Are you going to wake the krogan?" Miranda wanted to know.

"I haven't decided yet. One step at a time, dong ma? I'm going to talk to Jack."

* * *

><p>The biotic was back down in the maintenance area, and glared up from where she sat on the cot as Shepard wandered in.<p>

"Fuck. You can't leave me alone for five fucking minutes, can you?"

"Guess not," Shepard replied, canting a shoulder against the wall. "You level?"

"What do you want, Shepard?" Jack asked in weary irritation. "We both know that if I hadn't burned myself out I'd have turned you into paste."

"Maybe. Believe it or not, I've taken biotic hits strong enough to break bones and still managed to get up and fight, so I'm not all that terribly convinced of that. So. _Osco_."

"Yeah, Osco," Jack said bitterly. "I'm going to find her, with or _without_ your help."

"I know, but you're going to _have_ my help. Well, sort of."

Jack eyed her and Shepard shrugged. "She took a pot-shot at me, a while back. She was working with Benezia and Saren and I guess when I shot the matriarch I made her a little steamed. She tried to kill me, and she'll probably try again. Give her enough time, Osco will likely come right to us…but that's only a maybe. So I'm going to have a friend of mine do a bit of digging, see if she can't put a firm fix on Osco for you. If we find her, well…we may just have to introduce ourselves."

Jack seemed genuinely surprised at this, giving Shepard a wary blink. "Really?"

"Why not? You're a bit wild but you do good work, and from everything I've learned about her this Osco is an unstable blight on the galaxy so…why not?"

"I don't fucking get you, Shepard," Jack retorted, then abruptly rose from the cot, striding closer. Reaching out she grabbed Shepard's left hand, glaring at her wrist. Shepard made no move to pull away and when Jack's eyes caught sight of the scars, she blinked again.

"Meat-hooks? That little thief wasn't kidding?"

Shepard just lifted a brow and when Jack didn't release her hand, she asked, "You proposing?"

Scowling, the convict dropped Shepard's wrist. "I really don't fucking get you."

"Nothing to get," Shepard replied.

"I got your word? About Osco?"

"My word," Shepard agreed. "So long as you know that if you _ever_ take a swing at me again, biotically or not…I will put you the fuck out."

"Yeah well…" Jack nearly made a biting retort but held her tongue. "You kept your word about the records so…we'll see."

* * *

><p>The soft blue holographic orb that was EDI's interface seemed to watch silently as Shepard first paced around the cargo bay, then sat on a work bench, lighting up a cigar. She had been contemplating the krogan tank for an hour now, silently brooding.<p>

EDI was still fairly young, for an AI, and was still learning nuances of human behavior and expression. It didn't help that such things seemed to change a bit from individual to individual, and Shepard herself was very hard to interpret even on the best of days. Still, there seemed to be something more on her mind than simply whether or not to risk opening the tank.

"Shepard," she finally ventured. "I am not Chambers or Lawson, but I _can_ listen and offer advice. Something seems to be troubling you."

Shepard made a small gesture with her hand, the cigar pinched between two fingers tracing small curlicues of smoke in the air. "Back on Korlus, when we were fighting those crazed krogan…one of them talked to me-well, to _us_."

"I saw this in your report," EDI responded. "He seemed disinclined to attack you and informed you of Okeer's experiments."

Shepard nodded, taking a slow draw on her smoke before letting it out. "That krogan…this boy here in the tank…I can't help wondering if I'm really so different than they are."

"How do you mean?"

"I was rebuilt, EDI. Re-grown. Maybe Miranda didn't use a tank but the basic principle is the same, isn't it? One small slip, one minor miscalculation and what would I have been? Mindless…crazy…-_er_."

"The krogan were mindless because of basic and deliberate flaws in research," EDI pointed out. "They are different than you are in that respect, and in the respect that you were restored from your own genetic remains and those alone. These krogan were not healed individuals but completely engineered from a dozen different sources. It is not the same."

"Maybe," Shepard said thoughtfully, then gestured at the tank. "I can still feel it with this one, though. He's not any different than I am. He's a living, thinking creature who was brought here because of someone else's ambition. Is he aware of us, do you think?"

"Readings indicate minimal cognition. His brainwaves show he is unconscious."

"Does that matter?" Shepard asked. "Even as advanced as it is, medicine has never been able to determine if people in comas are completely unaware of what's going on around them."

"You intend to wake him up."

"I think so," Shepard agreed with a nod. "I think I've meant to all along, I've just been trying to rationalize it."

"Be careful," EDI warned. "The krogan's mind is biologically healthy but he is still krogan, and his personality and reactions are impossible to predict. He is as dangerous as any of his kind."

Shepard hopped off the workbench, taking a final draw on her smoke before scrubbing out the cherry and tucking the remains behind her ear to be finished later. Striding over to the tank, Shepard activated the holographic interface, and then powered it down.

There was a rush as the nutrient fluid started to drain, the krogan boy within slowly sagging to his knees as his buoyancy was lost. With a heavy series of clicks the tank released and swung open. Falling forward, the boy blinked and coughed, vomiting up fluid from his lungs, taking a first gasping breath.

Shepard watched as the young krogan oriented himself, blinking a pair of rather startling blue eyes as he tried to focus. Struggling up to his feet, he shook his head, snorting a little more fluid from his nose, before his eyes fixed to Shepard.

It was like being hit by a rover. Shepard grunted faintly as her back slammed into the wall, nearly half a ton of muscle and heavy bone plates pinning her there. A forearm the size of her thigh pressed against her chest as the krogan snuffed at her, then grumbled.

"Human, female," he murmured. "Before you die, I need a name."

"Mine, or yours?" Shepard asked, taking shallow breaths. He was pressing on her hard enough to make breathing difficult.

_Perhaps that wasn't the brightest idea I've ever had_, she thought, as the young krogan contemplated a moment.

"Mine," he said at last.

"Feel free to name _yourself_," she retorted. "My name is Shepard. Remember that for when I kill you."

He growled, but looked oddly pleased at this response. If nothing else, Shepard's time with Wrex had taught her how most krogan thought. To earn and keep their respect you never backed down…even when you had no chance.

"I heard Okeer speak, at the end…" he rumbled. "Legacy…warlord…grunt. Hmm. Grunt. That will do. I am Grunt."

"Good, I know what to write on your tombstone then."

"Tombstone," he murmured, as if not familiar with the word.

_Fuck, for all I know, he __**isn't**__ familiar with it. Who knows how much he really understands_?

"Let me make this plainer," she said sternly, narrowing her brown eyes as she shifted her head forward just a bit. "Let me go or I will fucking _kill you_."

"Huh! Little thing like you? I don't-"

Then he glanced down, noticing the pistol in her hand pressed firmly against his belly. He laughed a little, finally drawing back and loosening her.

"I like you," he said plainly.

"Good to know," she replied just as plainly, straightening and stretching her aching shoulders a little. "Now, we're going to have a simple, little discussion…short and sweet and to the point. I want you to join my crew. What do _you_ want?"

"Want?" he blinked. "I do not know what I…I want. Okeer could not impart connection…his enemies are not mine…I have no purpose."

"Then I'll give you purpose."

He seemed to weigh this. "Why?"

"We have great enemies, but I have a strong crew. You would make it stronger."

"Great enemies?" he hedged. "You do not exaggerate?"

"Our enemies threaten galaxies," she told him. Again, he looked pleasantly surprised.

"Huh. If that is true, then I will join you, Shepard. You seem strong. But if you are lying, if your enemies are not worthy, I will kill you."

"Fair enough," she smirked, finally putting her pistol away. "We don't really have clothing for a krogan aboard and it's probably not a good idea for you to go wandering about the ship…swinging in the breeze, as it were. We'll have to get you some suitable clothing and weapons."

"Weapons are good," he smirked, completely unconcerned with the fact he was utterly naked. "Food would be good too."

"EDI, have Miranda rustle up some pants at least that will cover our new shipmate," Shepard ordered. "And warn Rupert he's having a very big guest for dinner."

* * *

><p>Grunt, wearing the largest pair of sweat pants that could be found, sat at a table in the mess not an hour later, shoveling down plate after plate of food. Shepard, perched nearby and nursing a coffee, watched him with a mix of awe and amusement.<p>

"He certainly is big," Kelly commented as she took a seat nearby. "I don't think I've ever seen a krogan with blue eyes before. How…does he seem?"

"Fairly on the ball, all things considering," Shepard told her. "We had a little pissing contest and he decided I was worthy to live so…you know. That's always a plus."

"I know that you worked with Wrex on the original _Normandy_ and are somewhat familiar with krogan, and I know we needed a heavy hitter but…well, I don't have to tell you to be careful."

"Who is Wrex?" Grunt suddenly asked, looking up at them and revealing he could hear their conversation. Kelly colored a little but Shepard was completely non-plussed as she answered.

"A krogan battlemaster and warlord I worked with a couple of years ago. A good friend," she replied.

"Did you fight many battles together?"

"Yes," she said, giving an almost nostalgic smirk. "Hundreds fell under our boot-heels, before our guns. All our enemies were defeated and fled before us."

"Ha! I like that," he grinned.

"I thought you would," she said with a full on grin. "Maybe someday you'll get a chance to meet him."

"The imprints tell me humans are soft and weak," Grunt commented, before taking another shovel-sized bite of food. "You _look_ soft, but you do not _act_ soft."

Shepard shook her head, then looked at Kelly again. "Can you see that he's set up properly in the cargo bay. He needs something to sleep on, maybe a console or two. Give him a chance to really read up on his people, figure some things out."

"Of…course, Shepard. I'd be happy too."

"Thanks. I have a phone call to make. I'll be in my quarters if you need me."

* * *

><p>"I would be happy to, Shepard," Liara smiled at the small, holographic image hovering over the main console. "You are certain that Osco is the one that shot you on Noveria?"<p>

"Miranda's certain," Shepard told her. "She says there's surveillance footage that Cerberus was able to obtain from the facility cameras that show her doing it. You may be able to find copies of those, too."

"I knew that Gellian looked up to mother but…what you are saying implies a…a deeper relationship. If such a one existed, I did not know about it."

"It may just be speculation, or it may be that Osco had feelings for Benezia that simply weren't reciprocated. Doesn't really matter at this point, I don't think. She's got connections to both Okeer and to Jack, she was working with Saren and she's taken at least one shot at me. That makes her a person of very high interest in my book. The last thing I want her doing is showing up with the Collectors or popping out of the woodwork somewhere trying to take another stab at me, and we have no idea if she has any remaining interest in Jack."

"I will expend every resource I have. If Osco is alive and so much as buys a loaf of bread in this galaxy, I will find her."

"Thank you, Li. I appreciate it. How are things going on Hagalaz so far? How's Feron?"

"Things are going relatively quietly, as a matter of fact," Liara replied. "I am spending my time learning all that I can about the Shadow Broker's network and operations. The amount of contacts and information he had access to is staggering, Shepard…beyond what I had even imagined. I could take a lifetime trying to just categorize it. Feron is still…resting, for the most part. He is starting to help me a bit, however, and seems to want to work so…I am letting him."

She looked up, her eyes soft. " I…I know it has only been two days but…I _miss_ you, Shepard."

"I miss you too, Tianlán," Shepard replied gently. "Let me know as soon as you can any intel you find on Osco. I will call you again soon."

"I will, Shepard. Pleasant dreams. I will speak to you soon."

As the call disconnected and the holograph faded, Liara sighed a little. "I love you," she murmured, wondering when she'd actually get the nerve to say the words where Shepard could really hear them.


	31. Chapter 31

A/N: Slight edit. For some reason I had it in my head that Samara's recruitment was on the Citadel...even though I know better. I have gone through and removed mentions of C-Sec and replaced them with mentions of ISS instead (Ilium Security Services).

* * *

><p>Surrounded by a dozen different hovering holographic displays, a galaxy map swirling around her, Liara wandered in tired circles around the console, eyes constantly scanning, fingers casting away displays or drawing them near again for closer perusal.<p>

She half-saw Feron entering from the corner of her eye, but did not actually look at the drell until he stopped in front of her, thrusting a cup of tea through one of the center displays, holding it under her nose.

"Since I doubt I can talk you into sleeping, you need to at least take a break," he told her.

She smiled at him wearily, taking the cup. "Thank you, Feron. I will not be much longer…a few more minutes."

"That is what you said an hour ago, and an hour before that," he told her. "I don't think Shepard meant you had to work around the clock on this. If she knew you weren't resting-"

"I know, but it is so fascinating. I have uncovered more than I thought possible on Osco. She has such a colored past. To me, she was always mother's strange human friend, smart…but you were wary around her, as if she were a trained varren that might still bite. I was only in her company so rarely and so briefly…I have never actually looked at her as a person before, not really. It is…a shameful thing to admit."

"She did horrible things," Feron said with understanding, even as Liara cast away nearly half of her open displays, sipping at her tea. "It is natural to not wish to identify with someone like that. It is easier if you don't think of them as people, but rather something apart. It's hard to see beyond the things they do, to the person underneath."

"My mother saw beyond it," Liara said softly. "There was something there that my mother admired, wanted to help…perhaps I am not so wise, because I cannot see it."

"You are looking too hard," Feron told her. "You really do need to rest."

Something caught Liara's eye and she drew one of the displays closer, only half-hearing her companion. "This is recent," she murmured. "Osco's name appears on a krogan _clan_ list…? I don't…"

She read, her eyes widening slightly as she took it in. "Feron, Osco was recently on Tuchanka. She presented a young krogan male named Thug to Warlord Frek of Clan Dundrin…and…_by the Goddess_, this cannot be _possible_…"

"What is it?" he asked, even as she tossed that display away, quickly drawing up another and scrolling rapidly.

"Osco arrived on Tuchanka with the young krogan and an asari girl who referred to her as 'Mother'. The asari girl appears in Matriarch Misira Seko's personal records as Eír Osco neé T'S-"

Liara actually paled slightly. A little alarmed, Feron caught hold of her arm to steady her. "Liara?"

"The girl…" Liara breathed. "The girl is my _sister_…"

"What?"

"Misira records her birth mother as Matriarch Benezia T'Soni…this isn't _possible_."

"You said there was a slight chance that Osco and your mother had an intimate relationship," Feron said. "Could they not have-?"

"_No_," Liara replied. "I-I mean, _yes_, they could have but…w-we were not on the best of terms but…something like this…Mother would have _told_ me if there was a _child_…and…and no…_no_, here…Misira records the girl's age as ninety-seven. Osco could not possibly have sired such a child, and ninety-seven years ago I was still living at home on Thessia, I was only twelve. I would have been there for any birth of a younger sister. I…do not _understand_. Why would Osco claim this girl as Benezia's daughter? A girl nearly as old as I am, one quite old enough to be on her own? Why would this Eír go along with such a charade?"

Knowing that there was no way in Hades Gamma that he was going to get her to go rest now, Feron surrendered and did the next best thing.

"Here, we'll figure it out. I'll help you, go over the records at your complex on Thessia while you continue with the information on Tuchanka."

"Thank you, Feron," Liara said with a grateful nod. The drell only wordlessly returned it, and they both set to work.

* * *

><p>The soft chirp moving through the dim room was barely audible, and yet the instant it sounded, a pair of brown eyes snapped open. Glancing over at the clock, Shepard noted it was just after 0200 even as the chirp repeated.<p>

Wiping a hand over her eyes, she cast aside the blanket and picked up her omni-tool from the bedside stand, accessing it as she sat up. The display showed she had an incoming call. When she saw the source she got to her feet, answering it and accessing the holo display even as she set the omni-tool back on the stand.

Light shimmered out of the tool, a life-sized holographic reflection of Liara appearing a few feet away.

"Tianlán? Are you ok?" Shepard asked, all thought of sleep vanishing as she padded over to the image, worry on her face. Liara looked upset, and as if she were trying to hide it.

"Shepard, I am sorry, I did not mean to wake you-"

"I'm not worried about it, Li. What's wrong?"

"Shepard, I-I do not even know how to say this. My mind is still…I am still trying to process it all myself. I…Shepard, I have a _sister_."

"A sister?" Shepard echoed in surprise, brows raising.

"I was attempting to track down Gellian Osco. I traced her to Tuchanka recently and found..." the poor asari looked so flustered, Shepard actually reached out to take her shoulder before she remembered she was only a holographic image.

"It's ok, Liara, just take a deep breath," she urged. "I'm guessing you found out that Benezia had another daughter…one with Osco?"

"N-no, and yes…" Liara responded. "Nothing so simple. It took a few hours to piece together, both with records from Tuchanka and from my own home estate on Thessia. Shepard, Gellian Osco took genetic information from my mother's body, after it was returned home for final dispensation. She used this to…to _grow_ an asari child, in a tank…just as Grunt was grown."

"_What?"_

"Not all the records are there…Osco was very thorough in trying to cover her tracks but she also seems to have been in a hurry. There are reports from estate staff that she was, indeed, growing an asari child in a tank, that she insisted Benezia's casket be opened when it first arrived. More, she also grew a young krogan, a boy that has just been accepted into Clan Dundrin…his name is Thug."

"I just…this is kind of _strange_, isn't it?"

"Strange does not begin to cover it. According to my findings, both Thug and the asari girl…her name is Eír…were genetically engineered to grow to adulthood swiftly. Both are only two years of age, but Thug is the same development as an adolescent krogan boy of at least eighty, and Eír was accepted by Matriarch Misira Seko as being ninety-seven."

"Just like the krogan we found on Korlus," Shepard murmured. "Like Grunt. But…why would Osco do such a thing? Was her attachment to Benezia so strong that she just _had_ to grow her a daughter, post-mortem?"

"I do not know. Osco's mental state was unstable at best…clinically insane is probably closer to the truth. It doesn't change the basic fact, however, that I _have_ a sister. She is the genetic daughter of Benezia, post-mortem or not. I need to find her."

Shepard nodded. "You said they were on Tuchanka? We were heading back to Ilium but we can change course. Whatever her motivations, I won't leave your sister in the hands of some lunatic-"

"I appreciate that, Shepard, but it is not so simple. Eír is no longer in Osco's hands, as you say. Gellian Osco is dead."

"_Dead_? What happened?"

"Her genetic illness finally caught up with her," Liara said softly. "She died only a week or two ago, on Tuchanka. Thug, it seems, has joined Clan Dundrin and remains there, undergoing training with the Clan's next leader, Buhto. But Eír has left, apparently in the company of Matriarch Misira's youngest daughter, Shrive Seko. It…seems there was some scandal surrounding this, and it is unclear where their destination lies."

"Scandal? Like…_kidnapping_?"

Liara gave her love a dry look. "More like…_eloping_."

"Eloping," Shepard blinked. "Why would that…? Oh. Right. Because they're both asari. I still don't get that. Some of the best asari I know are pureblood."

"That's sweet of you to say," Liara smiled.

"Well, it seems like your sister is ok then, at least. Do you think she knows about _you_?"

"I do not know, Shepard," Liara said sadly. "I do not know what Osco told her about me, or about Benezia…or about _you_."

"Well, apparently I was hardly Osco's favorite person so I doubt she passed on any kind of shining accolades about _me_, but I'm not worried about that. Look, I know you want to find her, talk to her…and she deserves to know she has such a wonderful big sister out there. She's going to pop back up on the grid sooner or later, right? Back on Thessia, or somewhere else. When she does you'll find her. You can probably even get a message to her brother…Thug, was it? If he's still on Tuchanka he should be easy to track down, and he may know where she's gone. I'll keep my ears open too. If I hear anything about her you'll be the first to know."

"Thank you, Shepard," Liara murmured. "I…it all just came as such a shock. I never…I never had any sisters before, _any_ family besides Benezia. To learn of her, to learn how she was created…"

"Hey, it would have shaken anyone," Shepard soothed. "We're gonna find her, make sure she's ok. And she's gonna see how wonderful you are, Li. Who knows? Maybe this is the first good thing that mu gou Osco ever managed to do."

"I hope so, Shepard. I…will let you get back to sleep. I should probably rest as well. I will attempt to contact Dundrin Thug in the morning, see where that leads me."

"Sounds like a plan. Sweet dreams, Tianlán. Be safe, and let me know what happens."

The holographic asari stepped closer, one hand made of air and shimmering light hovering over Shepard's cheek a moment, before Liara nodded and the image faded away.

Blowing out a breath, Shepard scrubbed at the back of her neck, a solemn expression crossing her face as she sat back on the mattress. She was growing more and more concerned about Liara, the concern only increasing as did the distance between the _Normandy _and Hagalaz.

Though she _had_ meant her threat, she still didn't trust the Illusive Man. He knew where the base was. He might just be cocky enough to send an infiltration team to take it over the moment he judged Shepard was too far away or had outlived her usefulness. He might be banking on a direct threat to Liara securing his control over Shepard, knowing she would do whatever she had to, to keep the asari safe.

And now there was another unknown element thrown into the mix. Osco had no reason…not one that Shepard could see, at any rate…to lie to this Eír or Thug about Liara, or to even dislike the young asari archaeologist herself. Yet Osco _had_ been a lunatic, mentally unstable and incredibly inhuman at times. Who knew what state of mind she'd been in when she'd created these tank-born 'children'? Brilliant as she was, if she was insane or unstable because of grief or her genetic ailments then who knew if Eír or Thug were even remotely normal? They could be nothing more than twisted, deviate killing machines.

Evidence was a bit to the contrary, of course…deviate killing machines didn't tend to run off and elope, nor were they accepted to krogan clans-

_Ok, that last bit isn't true. I think it may even be a_ requirement _to join most clans_.

In the end, it all came down to the same fact; Liara and Feron were more or less alone on that ship, with only a few automated defenses between them and whatever might land unwelcome on their doorstep. That wasn't sitting well with Shepard in the slightest, and the more she considered it, the more she hated it.

Rubbing a hand over her face, she reached over and picked up her omni-tool, glancing again at the clock. 0235.

_It'll be just past 0100 on the Folly…_

Turning the tool around and around in her hand her hands thoughtfully a moment, she finally sighed, setting her jaw, and activated it. Dialing in a number she set it aside again.

_She probably won't answer. She hasn't got any reason to answer_.

The tool beeped lightly a few times, then suddenly activated as the call was picked up. Once more, a holographic form appeared in front of her.

A human woman, dressed much as Del was in a tank and yoga pants, coalesced in the center of the room. Her bare arms and the side of her neck were lined with tattoos, her blonde hair tied haphazardly back from her face. She had the build of a marine but the face of a video glam star, enhanced more than marred by a thin scar that split her left eyebrow.

"Fuck me six ways from Sunday," she greeted, planting her hands on her hips with a jerk of her chin. "I heard you were supposed to be dead."

"I got better," Shepard replied with a narrow look.

"And just decided to call me out of the blue, hmm? Don't know if I should be worried or flattered, _Delilah_. What'd I do to deserve such an honor?"

"I need to call in that favor," Shepard said, getting to her feet with a slow shake of her head. "And Sydney…it's a really _big_ fucking favor…"

* * *

><p>Liara's sleep was heavy but not undisturbed, thoughts spinning through her mind and causing disjointed dreams that left her feeling worn out, haggard, even upon waking. Showering and dressing, she picked up her personal data pad as she headed through the ship toward the main information hub, determined to get back to work. She would send a message to the Dundrin Clan, to Thug, see if he was at least willing to speak with her. On top of her personal quest to find her newly-discovered sister, however, there were a million and one other things she had to-<p>

She paused, half-way through scrolling through her messages. There was one from Shepard, timed just an hour after she'd finished her call with her last night.

Quickly selecting it, the asari opened the message and began to read:

_Hey, you,_

_Sorry I didn't call you again. I didn't want to wake you if you'd actually gotten to sleep. After I got off the horn with you I couldn't stop thinking. I know you can take care of yourself but the idea of you and Feron being alone on that ship with little more than location and a couple of mechs to keep you safe just doesn't rest well with me._

_I hope you don't mind. I called in a huge favor from an old friend. The past aside, I trust her with my life and more importantly, I trust her with __**you**__. You can trust her too. _

_She'll be knocking in a couple of hours. I suggest you let her in. _

_Miss you, Tianl__n. Let me know if you find your sister. I'll call again in a couple of days._

_Shepard._

Brows creased, Liara closed the message just as Feron appeared, jogging toward her with alarm on his face.

"Liara, there is a ship in solar orbit. They've sent a shuttle on a course to intercept us. The ship is small cruiser-"

"Are they hailing to dock?"

"N-No, not yet…are you _expecting_ someone?"

"Yes, Shepard sent me a message… but we cannot take the chance this is someone else."

She hurried into the main hub, drawing up an image of the cruiser and its ID's. "It's flagged as the _Pale Horse, _a ship registered to a former Alliance corsair organization based on a moon called Folsberg. Its owner is…"

She blinked, paling slightly.

"What is it?"

_{Broker ship, this is Shuttle Alpha from the TFS Pale Horse,}_ the voice suddenly echoed from the console, making them both blink. _{We are requesting permission to dock on your aft deck.}_

Reaching out a hand, Liara selected a command. "Shuttle Alpha, please _verify_ identification."

A different voice responded, this one female. _{We're here because of the craziest bitch ever to pick up an assault rifle,}_ came the answer. _{Shepard sends her best.}_

"Sh-Shuttle Alpha, you are clear to land," Liara replied, and quickly opened the aft docking bay. Abandoning the console, she hurried that direction, Feron on her heels.

The shuttle was still powering down as they entered, the huge door on its side swinging open. A dozen men and women emerged, all wearing full combat hard-suits. Each suit was painted black and white, each breastplate bearing the image of a human skull and a strange bladed weapon. Striding out the mercs quickly ranked up, a final figure hopping down to the deck as they did so.

From the shape, this one was female. In addition to the black and white, her shoulder pads had been painted crimson. As she strode forward, she reached up and unfastened her helmet, drawing it off.

Golden blond hair was pulled back into a tail, amber eyes carefully measuring in the way most hardened marines had. Her left brow was split with a scar.

Her gaze fixed to Liara as she strode forward, every step as no-nonsense as any Shepard had ever taken.

She was a stranger, and yet Liara would have recognized her immediately, even if she hadn't seen the listed owner of the _Pale Horse_.

"Dr. T'Soni?" she asked as she drew to a halt a couple of feet away.

"Yes," Liara replied. "This is…this is _Thanatos_, if I am not mistaken."

"Indeed," the woman smiled. "Former Alliance marines, each and every goddamn one. There are twenty of us on deck, and I have a forty more aboard ship ready to ferry down. We are under your command and at your disposal."

"A merc group," Feron murmured suspiciously. The woman turned her eyes to him.

"We are _not_ mercs. We were, until about two years ago, Alliance corsairs. Since the battle of the Citadel we've…gone our _own_ direction, but we are _not_ guns for hire nor mindless muscle out working just for credits. Thanatos is unique, and we would not even be here if one of my closest friends hadn't asked. I owe Commander Shepard my goddamn life. She says you need protection, and we are here to protect."

Liara tried not to show hesitation as she nodded, reaching out and offering her hand. "I am grateful to you for any help you can give," she said as evenly as she could. "You…may call me Liara."

The blonde woman nodded, reaching out and accepting the hand with a firm grip.

"Syd Rasler."

* * *

><p>The room was dim and silent, yet seemed somehow charged with tension. Shepard's fingers tightened on the butt of her machine pistol. She would have known, even if they <em>hadn't<em> heard the muffled voice echoing from in here, that the room was not empty. There was a feeling of that people gave off…some called it an energy, others an aura. Most people didn't think it existed, but it was there. A displacement of air, a prick of old primitive instinct that some folk just never picked up on.

Assassins and thieves knew about this _feeling_. They learned to hone their own presence, some unconsciously, to damp down this energy until they could literally disappear even from the most attuned instincts. It was, however, a rare gift and more instinct as well than talent, and whoever was lurking in this room most certainly did not possess it.

"I know you're there," Shepard announced firmly. "Come out, right now."

There was a soft motion, and Shepard aimed her pistol in that direction even as an asari timidly straightened from where she'd been crouching behind a table. She was wearing Eclipse armor, and seemed to regard Shepard, Miranda, and Zaeed with wide-eyed fear.

"D-Don't shoot, I'm not a threat," she said quickly.

"Hands," Shepard ordered, but the girl rambled on as if she didn't hear her.

"M-my name is Elnora, I thought it would be fun to be a merc but I was _wrong_! I didn't hurt anybody, I only pretended to shoot because the others were looking but I really didn't! I don't think I could kill anyone, I don't have the stomach-"

"Elnora," Shepard barked, eyes narrowed. Her tone startled the girl enough that she blinked, her tirade halting.

"Wh-what?"

"You're an Eclipse sister?"

"Y-yes?"

"A _full_ Eclipse sister?"

"Y-yes," she stammered. Shepard nodded.

"Fucking hands, _now_."

"B-but I already told you, I _didn't shoot_!" the girl replied, shocked. "I'm harmless-"

"She really expects us to buy that?" Zaeed asked. Shepard took half a step forward, eyes stern and pistol unwavering.

"How fucking stupid do you think I am?" she growled. "Every Eclipse commits a murder to become a full member, _Elnora_. So quit the fucking bullshit, and show me your motherfucking hands before I blow a hole right through your lying tongue."

The girl started to bring her hands up and Shepard's finger tensed on the trigger as she saw the butt of a pistol. "_Slower_," she ordered. "Set it on the table."

"Fuck you," the girl snapped, jerking the weapon upwards. Shepard's pistol barked a single, flat bang, and the girl crumpled to the ground.

"Eclipse are always so fucking dense," Zaeed mused as Shepard lowered her gun.

"Makes it easier to take them down," she noted.

Miranda walked over to the far door as Shepard crouched, picking up Elnora's pistol and looking it over, before popping out the thermal and tossing the weapon away. "Piece of junk too. Hanchester, .22 caliber. She might as well have tried shooting me with a fucking spit-ball."

Tucking the clip away in her belt she straightened as Miranda glanced back from the hall beyond the far door. "Shepard, I hear something."

Stepping over the corpse herself, Shepard moved over to the XO's side, listening. There were muffled voices, the unique echoing pulse of biotics. Gesturing to her companions she drifted over to the wall beside the next door. Miranda took up the other side, Zaeed dropping to his knee and covering the opening with his rifle.

Shepard nodded once, then reached over and hit the holographic interface. As the door slid open, an Eclipse sister flew out of it and slammed against the wall, falling in a broken heap.

"I will ask once again," a calm, almost sultry voice spoke from within. Shepard peered around the corner to see another Eclipse, backing away from a second asari who was pacing toward her with regal patience. While the Eclipse looked terrified, her confronter seemed as if she were attending nothing more exciting than a tea party, exuding calm and a serene grace even human dancers would have found impossible.

"What is the name of the ship upon which she departed?"

"Go to hell," the terrified merc spat, still moving backward. "You think I'll tell you? Do you know what she'd do to me if I did?"

The other asari lifted a hand, swirls of white and blue making a rippling aura of power around it. The very air seemed to bend to her whim as the merc was lifted off her feet, thrown down to the ground. Stepping forward as the aura died, the woman planted a foot on the merc's neck.

Her expression never changed, her tone still calm and almost soothing as she urged the merc to find her peace…and then broke her neck.

As she stepped back, Shepard lowered her gun and straightened, walking into the room. The asari glanced up at her, eyes moving to her two companions a moment, before returning their stormy gray gaze to hers.

"You are not Eclipse," she stated. "My business is not with you."

"It is if you are the Justicar named Samara," Shepard replied, shipping her pistol.

"That _is_ my name," the woman affirmed, "but I do not have yours."

"I am Commander Shepard," Del replied respectfully. "We've come to ask for your help."

"Many desire my help, but I am on a mission of my own," Samara intoned quietly. "I am tracking a very dangerous fugitive and cannot be distracted from my goal."

"Maybe we can help," Shepard offered. Even had she known nothing about this woman standing in front of her, Shepard would have known instantly that she was a very experienced, very powerful entity, so much stronger and more elegant than most asari Shepard had met.

She had to remind herself that most asari she had met were very young. She'd encountered hundreds, but only three of any real age: Benezia, Tevos, and Aria. Standing here now was like standing before royalty…an old lioness of a great pride, perhaps…a predator more than familiar with the hunt, made only wiser and sharper with age.

"I can appreciate the sentiment, but this is my mission," Samara replied. "I ask only that you do not hinder it."

"Local law enforcement has been instructed to detain you," Shepard said. "I really need your help against the Collectors, who have been abducting human colonies. Your assistance is vital to my mission and the ISS rep for this district really doesn't want to be killed for just following orders so…there has to be a way to solve all our problems. Let me help you. You're…looking for a ship name? I know how to turn thumb-screws, put the pressure on. I can find the ship name for you, if you go back and wait at the ISS office for a few hours."

Those grey eyes seemed to strip her bare all of a sudden, slicing past skin and tissue and driving deep, as if she could see Shepard's soul just by looking for it intently enough. Then her gaze turned thoughtful.

"Collectors…yes, I have heard some of these matters. Thousands of innocents, taken from their homes and beds and vanished into the night. Very well, Shepard. I will return to ISS and wait. If you are successful in retrieving the name of the ship, return to me, and we will see what help we can be to each other."

Shepard inclined her head in a half-nod, half-bow of agreement, watching as the asari stepped past and then out of the room.

"Now _that_ is a seriously classy lady," Zaeed noted.

Shepard's expression darkened a little. Not because she _dis_agreed, but because she rather vehemently _agreed_.

Shepard had never been ashamed to indulge in, as Alenko had once described it, _art appreciation_. She could recognize beauty and power and appreciate them for their own sake. Normally, admiring someone like Samara wouldn't have even made her blink, however right now it was making her feel strangely…self-conscious.

Shaking it out of her head she returned her mind to the mission, looking at her companions. "Let's go find that ship."

* * *

><p>The smell was one that Shepard would never forget, no matter how many years or decades she spent away from it. The slightest whiff, harmless in and of itself, was powerful enough to immediately put her back into the Room, put her back to being that neglected, starving, nameless little girl trapped in a hellish ambrosia of vomit, urine, sweat, desperation…and <em>this<em>.

"This is all red sand," Zaeed commented, bringing voice to what Shepard was already thinking. "All these crates…there's enough here to send half of Ilium drifting. Goddamn mind-burning shit."

Shepard stepped between the crates, scowl now firmly affixed to her face. Miranda shook her head as she followed. "Bet that ISS agent would be interested to hear about this. Looks like these Eclipse mercs are serious suppliers. They-"

"Stop!" a voice suddenly piped up on front of them. Shepard lifted her pistol, then blinked and lowered it a little as she caught sight of the volus waddling into view.

She had learned from the attack on the Citadel that volus could be nasty little contenders when they wanted to be. Most people didn't take them seriously…Shepard included, until one named Yoh Etat had gunned down more than his fair share of geth.

This one, however, was not armed…and not even walking straight. He weaved drunkenly, barely managing to keep his feet, even as he gestured at them.

"Stop right there! You shall not pass! I will tear you limb from limb!"

"Is he serious?" Miranda asked. Shepard straightened, pistol held in both hands and pointed at the ground as she cocked her head.

"Fear me!" the volus declared hotly. "I am a beast in the jungle! I am a demon of the dark tides! I am-"

"…higher than a goddamn kite," Zaeed snorted.

"No! I am _powerful_! Wasea made me powerful! At first, when she started injecting so many drugs into me, I was afraid…but now I smell my greatness!"

"I smell something too, and it's _not_ greatness," Miranda smirked.

Shepard shook her head, walking forward. "Get out of the way, and get a nap," she grumped as she started to step around the man. He thrust his hands up, planting them on her hips in an attempt to stop her, digging in his heels.

"No! I am a mountain in the mist! You shall not-"

Shepard stepped back and to the side. Taken off balance, the volus tipped forward and fell flat on his face.

"Oh," he muttered almost sadly. He got so far as to place his palms on the ground to push himself back up, then seemed to lose energy, slumping again. "Mabye…I will. Tired. Lay here…for a while. Take a nap. Then…destroy you later."

"You do that," Shepard replied. As Zaeed and Miranda stepped around him, the brunette operative shook her head.

"This…_Wasea_, did that to him," she said. "Injected him with drugs…red sand and who knows what else? How can someone _do_ that?"

"Experiment on other people to further their own goals, you mean?" Shepard asked. Miranda hesitated.

"That's not fair, Shepard," she said, genuinely hurt. "It's not the same. I-"

"Sorry, Miranda. I didn't mean it like that. You I count a friend, but you know damn well how I feel about Cerberus. I always will. Now c'mon. We still need to find that ship name and this Wasea needs a few lessons in manners."


	32. Chapter 32

"You cannot do this, Earth-clan! I will…have you arrested for _assault!_ This is unacceptable! Release me at once!"

The volus managed to sound indignant, furious, and terrified, all at once. His right arm clasped firmly in Shepard's unforgiving grip, Pitne For was desperately trying to dig in his heels, to no avail. Shepard, who had man-handled far stronger and more determined individuals than the volus merchant, barely lost a pace as she dragged him along like a parent with a squat toddler that didn't want to see the dentist.

Several ISS officers stood up at the commotion as the display entered, Pitne's shouts switching from ordering Shepard to release him, to ignoble demands that the officers 'arrest this crazy Earth-clan!'

Detective Anaya, a dark blue asari, rose from behind one of the desks, eyebrows lifted at the sight as she folded her arms. Behind her, seated in a waiting chair like any queen upon a throne, the Justicar Samara merely watched with hooded grey eyes.

"What's all this?" Anaya asked, glancing from Shepard to Miranda and Zaeed, who lingered just within the office doorway.

"This Earth-clan has assaulted me!" Pitne For squawked indignantly. "I demand you arrest her!"

Shepard, who had a pair of data pads in her free hand, passed one to Anaya. "Eclipse manifest," she explained as the detective looked at it. "There's enough red sand in that warehouse to make a goddamn beach, not to mention several crates of Minagen X-3 as well. And guess who they got it from?"

"Lies! All lies!" the volus tried to tug away again, to no avail.

"Pitne, you've been a very busy volus," Anaya smirked as she read the manifest, then nodded to two of her compatriots. "Red sand's not illegal on Ilium but I'm betting you don't have the proper sales and release permits for _this_ amount of powder, and Minagen…_that's_ a different song my friend. We're going to have to have a _serious_ discussion about this."

The officers came forward, one unsnapping bind-cuffs from his waist. The volus seemed to bounce in one spot as he hopped up and down frantically, bellowing his accusations.

"Framed! I was _framed_! This Earth-clan has falsified those records! I am nothing more than an innocent merchant! I want her arrested!"

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," Anaya said sarcastically, watching as the volus was cuffed and taken away, still barking his demands and threats.

"I _knew_ he was dirty," Anaya said, shaking her head. "Thanks, Commander. I don't suppose you found anything to help the Justicar?"

The detective's concern over having Samara in her offices was clear in her voice. Stepping past her toward the Justicar, Shepard could feel her shoulders stiffen as the woman rose.

An N7 marine, veteran of more combat scenarios than she could count, Shepard was not easily intimidated by anyone. She'd faced down a thresher maw, went head to head with a vicious yahg, got body-slammed by a half-ton krogan boy…and _those_ events she'd describe as simple day-to-day.

Yet, there was something about this asari Justicar that did just that…_intimidated_ her. The woman _was_ taller than Shepard, topping her by at least four inches, but it wasn't that. If mere superior height could do it, then Shepard would have been intimidated by Miranda, Garrus, Jacob, Grunt and dozens of others. In fact, the only three people on the ship that Shepard could think of that were of even height or shorter than she was, were Kelly, Kasumi, and Jack. Even Gabriella had a few centimeters on her.

Perhaps then it was her sheer force of age, the idea that she'd experienced centuries before Shepard had even been born. Or maybe it was her biotic power, an aura of which seemed to surround her even when she was not using it, an invisible cape of raw energy that lifted the fine hairs on the back of Shepard's neck.

Whatever the cause, intimidation was not a sensation that Shepard was used to, or comfortable with, and she disliked that this woman roused it in her.

"I have the name of the ship," she said, offering the Justicar the second data pad. As the woman took and perused it, Shepard unconsciously went into parade rest, a stance usually reserved for superior officers after they had told her to be at ease.

"This is precisely what I need, Commander," the Justicar said. "I am…impressed, that you were able to attain it so swiftly."

"Get the job done, that's our motto," Zaeed piped up from near the door.

The Justicar didn't even glance at him, her gaze still on Shepard's face. "Very well. You have kept your end of the bargain. I will join your cause, Shepard. I must swear an oath to you, so I will never have to choose between your orders and the Code."

Oath? Shepard blinked, stepping back a pace as the asari lowered to one knee in front of her. She could feel every set of eyes in the office staring at them.

She knew very little of Justicars or this Code of theirs. The dossier had been vague, Miranda herself only able to offer slightly more insight. The woman supplicating herself at Shepard's feet only made her feel even _more_ intimidated, oddly, and she could only watch dumbly as Samara spoke.

"By the Code I will serve you, Shepard. Your choices are my choices. Your morals are my morals. Your wishes are my Code."

She flared with biotic energy as she fell silent, the charge once again seeming to lift the hair on the back of Shepard's neck like a wash of static electricity.

_What do I say? Am I __**supposed**__ to say something? Thank you, maybe?_

As Samara rose to her feet again, Shepard inclined her head slightly, clearing her throat. "I…I am honored," she managed.

"I must warn you, Shepard," Samara said evenly. "I will obey you in all things until this mission is complete, however once it is done, I may have to kill you if you ask me to do anything unjust or dishonorable."

_Good glory fuck, what did I just get into?_

"Understood," she managed to say. "It's good to have you aboard. And if you need any more assistance with your own mission I would be happy to-"

"That will not be necessary," Samara replied. "I will gather my things and retire to your ship. I have spent many days on my feet and require rest and nourishment."

"Oh, absolutely. It's the _Normandy_, we're at docking slip 147, not too far from here."

"Understood. I will see you aboard."

Shepard watched her as she walked out of the ISS offices, before heading over to her companions. Miranda looked both surprised and concerned.

"What was _that_ all about?" she asked.

"I've _got_ to find out more about this Justicar Code," Shepard replied with a shake of her head as they stepped out of ISS. Reaching up, she hit her ear-bud.

"Joker, this is Shepard. The Justicar is coming aboard soon. Have Kelly arrange her a berth and…some food. Make sure Rupert does his best to _not_ make it taste like last year's leftovers."

_{Understood Commander,}_ Joker replied. _{I was just about to contact you as well. We got notification that one assassin you were looking for, the drell? Well, seems he's on Ilium, too. There's an ISS contact named Seryna that may have more intel on his movements.}_

"ISS?" Shepard repeated, pausing. "All right, Joker. We'll get in touch with her, see what's what. In the meantime make our newest guest feel at home. And…try not to do anything…_unjust-y_."

_{Un…just-y?}_

She smirked. "Shepard out."

"Are we going back to ISS?" Miranda asked, as Shepard turned back toward the offices they'd just left.

"Joker got a lead on Thane Krios. Apparently he's here and there's some ISS officer that may be able to point us in the right direction. We don't snag him now we may never get another chance."

As they re-entered the offices it was clear the fluster regarding the Justicar and what had occurred had not yet died down. Looking surprised as she caught sight of them again, Anaya headed their direction.

"Commander? Forget something?"

"Sorry to bother you again," Shepard told her. "Do you have an officer named Seryna? I need to speak with her."

"She's a communications and dispatch officer. She's in the center right through there," Anaya pointed at a door. "Should be third station on the left."

"Thank you."

Though the center through the door that Anaya had indicated had enough stations for easily two dozen officers, there were only two in evidence. One at the far end of the room, and one at the station that the detective had indicated. As Shepard approached, the asari there glanced up.

"Help you?"

"Are you Seryna?" Shepard asked. "I heard you might have some information on an assassin I'm looking for. Krios?"

Putting her station on hold, the woman nodded and stood up, directing Shepard a bit further away from her co-worker. "Yeah, he's on a job. Before I tell you anything, please promise me you're not gonna stop him."

"From taking out a mark?"

"Yeah, he's got my former boss in his sights. Real nasty bitch. I got some dirt on her a while back. Found out she'd extorted some money and shifted some funds in order to pay someone to take out her sister. Seems dear old sis was doing some slaving out in the Terminus and there was a risk her mud was going to get all over my boss's skirt, so-"

Shepard's eyes narrowed as a nagging little memory suddenly surfaced. "Wait a moment…your former boss? Is her name Dantius?"

Seryna blinked, then smirked. "Yeah, Nassana Dantius. And I can see by the look on your face, you're not that fond of her either."

"Yeah, you could say she and I have some unfinished business," Shepard replied angrily. She didn't tell Seryna that _she_ was the one that Dantius had paid to take out her sister. It was a shit deal, a lie from the very start. Shepard was no one's tool or hired thug, and Dantius had made her just that.

"Good, then this'll be better than I'd hoped," Seryna told her. "Krios is going to try and hit her tonight at Dantius Towers. I can take you to them if you want, but you'll have to get to him on your own. Man's a shadow's shadow, so it won't be easy. You want my opinion, don't even bother looking. Just head for Nassana and he'll show up, sooner or later."

* * *

><p>"Ori, I want a full weapons and automated systems analysis within the hour, ok? If anything needs fixed or tweaking I want to know about it as soon as possible. Big guy, let Ori work and get your handsome ass over here."<p>

The quiet Broker ship had turned into controlled chaos. More Thanatos troops had been ferried down, and it seemed every time Liara turned her head there was a new face. Only one in particular, however, had her full attention.

Sydney Rasler, head of Thanatos, former Marine survival specialist and N7 trainer…and old friend to Del Shepard.

_No, not friend. They were more than that…and that is what troubles you._

Liara had not been lying when she'd told Shepard she was not jealous of her memories of Rasler. Liara was inexperienced but not completely naïve. It would have been foolish to assume that Shepard had never been involved with anyone before her. She was, after all, not a shy little archaeologist as Liara was. She did keep herself closed off from others a great deal, and it was rare for her to truly open herself emotionally to anyone, but she was not shy, not inexperienced. Clearly, this Rasler had been one of those elite few she'd let see the real her, and Liara found it was two quite different things…to be confronted with the memory of an old flame years past, and to be face to face with the woman herself.

She found that she kept comparing Rasler to herself, and continually had to force herself to stop. It was not an easy task. They seemed to be such opposites, and the more she thought about it the more it seemed that Rasler was actually a more suitable mate for Shepard than she was.

Rasler was a marine, strong and confident, like Del was. She was human, a soldier, as Del was. They had the same type of drive, determination. Aesthetically, Rasler was very lovely, with pleasing features, physically strong and yet with a distinct grace to her.

On every measure, Liara felt as if she fell short. Why would Shepard even care about a shy little asari doctor like her, when compared to this strong, self-confident human woman?

_Stop it. Shepard loves you. _

_Does she? She has never said the words._

_Neither have you…where she can actually __**hear**__ them. You know her heart, Liara. She is not so fickle as all that. Rasler was out of her life long before she met you. You are the one she cares about now, and you know it._

Her mental argument was interrupted when Rasler called out to the slender redhead whose name was apparently Ori, and the rather large man standing beside her.

As the fellow approached, Liara unconsciously stiffened. He seemed to be a krogan in human form, if such a thing were possible. He was huge, not only in height but in width, and Liara could imagine him turning sideways to pass through most normal doorways. His build was all soldier, lousy with muscle. His hands looked like he could crush her skull without effort.

Despite Rasler's comment, he was not a handsome fellow. His face was craggy and worn by life and harsh elements. His broad, flat nose had been broken so many times it had become a shapeless lump, and there was a gold ring through his septum. He'd shaved his iron gray hair so close that wide slabs of his scalp were visible through the bristles.

His left ear was missing in a mass of gnarled scar tissue that extended down his neck and crossed his throat. As he stopped at Rasler's side and looked down at Liara, she felt she would be crushed merely by the weight of his gaze.

"Liara, this is Wilcher, my second-in-command," Rasler introduced. The big guy offered his hand, and trying not to seem hesitant, she reached out and took it. Her slim blue fingers were lost in his mammoth palm and for a moment she could imagine him crushing them, snapping the bones like twigs by mere accident of too much pressure.

Of course, that didn't happen. His grip was oddly gentle, his brown eyes smiling as he bobbed his head toward her, his voice gravelly and distorted but kind enough. "My pleasure, ma'am."

"P-please, call me Liara," she told him as he released her hand.

"Good luck with that," Rasler smirked. "Fucker still calls _me_ 'ma'am', even _after_ I broke his nose twice."

Ignoring her, Wilcher spoke to Liara. "So, you're a friend of Shepard's? Bet we got some good stories we can swap."

"You know Shepard?" Liara asked.

"I was her commanding officer for two years. She was reassigned about four months before that mess at Torfan," he replied. "I got her right out of training. Like a bottle of lightning, that one. Wish I'd had her at Akuze."

"Wilcher's unit was killed by a maw attack on Akuze," Rasler told her. "Only he and Ori survived."

"That's why I have my devastating good looks," he grinned, tapping the scar tissue where his ear should have been. "Anyway, I'm sure we'll have a chance to talk later. It was nice meeting you, ma'am. I'd best get back to work."

"He's a good guy," Sydney commented as he walked away. "Looks scary as all fuck, I'll grant you that, but he's a serious softie under all of that. Don't get me wrong, the man _can_ tear apart varren with his earlobes, but he's got a good heart."

"That is…an interesting image," Liara replied.

Rasler grinned, folding her arms. She'd removed her hard-suit shortly after arriving, and the clothes beneath had the cut of a uniform, very similar to the Alliance only in black, white and red instead of blue, gray and gold. That skull and odd bladed weapon were patched on both sleeves, her tattooed forearms left bare.

Glancing around at all the bustle again, Liara brooded with thought a moment.

_You spent two years pretending to be strong and confident. What makes this any different? Talk to her. __**Ask**__ her._

"I…appreciate everything that you and Thanatos are doing for me," Liara finally ventured, drawing herself up to her full height, which was still noticeably at least an inch shorter than the human woman before her.

Rasler shook her head. "Del wants you safe."

Liara nodded a little. "You…said she had saved your life?"

"Mmhmm," Rasler hummed, nodded, then narrowed her eyes at Liara slightly. "Tell you what. I can see a dozen different questions on your face and I have to admit, I got a few myself. Wilcher's got all this in hand. If you got a bit, why don't we find a place to park and talk for a little while?"

"I would like that," Liara admitted. "Feron is overseeing anything that needs immediate attention. I can…spare some time. Doubtless you are hungry?"

"MRE is fine with me," Rasler told her. "And a good beer, if you have some."

"I have not had a chance to take full inventory of the galley yet but…I believe we can find something suitable. It is just this way."

Liara led the way to the small ship's galley. There was beer, it turned out…courtesy of the mercs who had formerly provided security for the Broker. Liara selected a boba tea for herself, and the two women took over a table in the empty dining area.

"Ah…not the best beer I've ever had but it'll more than do," Rasler smiled after taking a swallow of the brew in her hand. "So…you wanted to know how Shepard saved my life."

"If you would care to share…" Liara nodded.

Rasler shrugged, cracking open the seal on the MRE she'd scrounged up. "I was a Specialist at the time, doing survivalist training exercises for the N7 recruits. We were on a transport. Shepard, me piloting, and this whiny little pissant trainee named Hawkins. You ever heard of a group called God's Planet?"

When Liara shook her head, Rasler gestured with her fork a little. "Crazy bunch. Religious zealots of the worst kind, the _psycho_ kind. Their whole philosophy was that human beings weren't meant to go out into space at all…that God had put us on Earth because that's where He wanted us, and that leaving, even to go to the moon, was blasphemy at its finest. And of course, because God is love and patience and understanding, they had to express their displeasure by blowing shit up and killing people."

"That is horrible!"

"Like I said, psychos," she replied with a nod. "So, they'd been making themselves a nuisance, trying to infiltrate military space operations, protesting outside of civilian launches, that sort of thing. They'd taken out a small merchant shuttle heading for one of the colonies…killed four people. That made headlines for a while. Anyway, so we three are on this transport shuttle heading back from…one exercise or another, I don't even recall. And these Planet zealots had made a neat little nest for themselves on our flight path…them and the shiny new missile launcher they'd secured from some black market down south."

"They took down the shuttle?"

"Rocket right to the engine," Sydney nodded. "Centimeters off the eezo core. Had they been just a hair more on the ball, we'd have all blown to dust in a nanosecond and I wouldn't be here talking to you. Instead, engines went out, control went out. We were flying over the coastline and I barely managed to keep the thing from plastering into a cliffside, and instead managed to drop us in the drink. Don't recall a damn thing after hitting the water until I was on the shore, Shepard slapping the hell out of my face."

She smirked a little, shaking her head. "Everything got told to me later. Shuttle hit the water half a mile offshore, impact hard enough to breach the hull. We were flooding fast, I was out for the count. Major laceration with concussion, two broken ribs, four fingers, pelvis, left foot. Shep had a busted leg and nose. And that damn Hawkins…what's he get? Not a goddamn thing. He wasn't even bruised. How's that for luck?"

She took a draught of her beer, licking her lips slightly. "Hawkins manages to free himself, and then being the paragon of courage and good soldierly conduct he was, the fucker saves _himself_. Not even a look toward Del and me, just wormed his way out of the breech and lit off toward shore."

"This was a marine?" Liara asked, shocked.

"Oh, trust me. He wasn't a marine for very long after that. Dishonorable discharge for cowardice and abandonment in the line of duty. Bastard. Anyway, Del managed to cut herself loose of her restraints, cuts me loose as well, then gets us both out just as the shuttle completely swamps. Swam half a mile in frigid Atlantic waters with a goddamn busted leg, hauling me the whole way. She got a lovely case of pneumonia for her trouble, too. If it hadn't been for her, I would have drown in that shuttle instead of getting this lovely scar," she touched the split over her eyebrow," and Hawkins would be doing time for manslaughter, not just off trying to peddle second-hand omni-tool parts out in the Terminus."

"What happened to the terrorists?"

"Oh, there were some raids, a few arrests. Eventually the Planeters were broken up, disbanded. Some were absorbed into Terra Firma, which is just a whole different type of crazy, but at least they don't blow shit up."

She took another swallow of her beer, watching Liara as she silently contemplated her boba tea. Then she inclined her head, smirking a little. "Her saving my life isn't really what you wanted to ask about, is it?" she asked.

When Liara looked up at her, surprised, Rasler set her bottle and MRE tray aside, folding her hands on the table as she looked intently at the asari, speaking matter-of-factly.

"We were involved for about eighteen months, on and off," she stated. "Started shortly after she saved my life, ended a dozen times before it was really through. She's a good woman, Liara. A good soldier, a good marine, but I'm sure I haven't got to tell you- she has some serious weight on her shoulders. She wasn't ready to let that shit go and to be honest…I wasn't the right one to help her do it. She put me on a pedestal I didn't exactly earn and…we just weren't right for each other. We both knew that pretty quick but I guess it was just hard to really admit it. You two…got a thing going? Is that it? You're worried about the old girlfriend coming back? Don't be. That song's been sung and there isn't going to be an encore."

"I…yes, of course. I know you are right. I know her better than that," Liara admitted. "She just…she admired you a great deal, and then…"

"And then I just showed up here, out of the blue," Rasler finished, and nodded. "I understand. Truth be told, I have no idea what it is she admires about me. I mean, the woman came back from the _dead_, if rumor can be believed. That's a really hard one to top, you know?"

"The rumor is true," Liara affirmed.

"No shit?"

"It is," she smiled. "I will say, I admired Commander Shepard from the moment I met her. Of course, she _was_ saving my life at the time. When she went after a thresher maw on foot, however-"

"Wait a second. She took on a thresher maw? On _foot_?"

"She did indeed," Liara nodded. Beer and food forgotten, Sydney sat forward, eyes lighting a little.

"Ok, this one I have _got_ to hear…"

* * *

><p>Shepard stood in the deepening dark of the Ilium twilight, daylight slowly being overtaken by the bright neon and holographic displays of the great city. Seryna had dropped them off at the foot of the Dantius Towers due to anti-craft weaponry at the summit…an idea which just made Shepard scratch her head.<p>

_Isn't that a clue that you're doing something wrong? When you look at your commercial building blueprints and think, 'hmm…atrium, pool deck, cafeteria…you know what would make this perfect? Some really big guns!'_

Then again, Nassana hadn't struck Shepard as the kind of person who made friends nearly as easily as she made very bad enemies. Perhaps the anti-craft guns weren't a bad move after all.

As they approached the great glass lobby doors of Tower One, muffled pops suddenly sounded from within. Instantly Shepard recognized the sounds as gunfire, drawing her own weapon as she ran forward, blinking at the sight that unfolded past the glass.

Two salarian civvies were running across the lobby, a FENRIS and a couple of security mercs in full hard-suits in pursuit. The salarians were clearly terrified, and apparently unarmed. Even as Shepard took the sight in, the mercs opened fire. Bullets tore through the back of the rearmost salarian, green blood flying in thick arcs as the man stumbled and collapsed.

"Fuck me!" Shepard snarled, jerking her rifle up to her shoulder.

The glass doors erupted with a boom, collapsing in a waterfall of shards as fire licked from the end of Shepard's gun. Zaeed ran past her, erasing what was left of the interior door with a blast from his shotgun as the FENRIS turned in its course toward them. Biotics engulfed it, sending it slamming hard enough into the wall to crumple its limbs, killing it in a whine of dying mechanics and an arc of electricity.

Shepard drew a bead on the mercs even as they recoiled, dropping the first one as she strode forward, boots crunching in shattered glass. The second merc turned to run the other way, and got a back full of Zaeed's shotgun, a hard enough blast to wipe out his shields. A quick biotic trip from Miranda, another few spits from the end of Shepard's rifle, and he was out of business.

Clearing the lobby quickly, Shepard knelt down at the fallen salarian's side, lightly touching his neck. The muscles in her jaw flexed and she shook her head, before straightening.

"The other one went this way," Zaeed gestured, indicating a blood trail.

They found the second salarian slumped by a side door, his hand plastered to his side, emerald blood leaking from between his fingers. When he saw them his eyes went wide, and he tried to crawl back against the wall.

"P-Please, I'll leave…please don't hurt me," he begged.

"No one's going to hurt you," Shepard reassured, shipping her rifle so it didn't seem like a threat, already digging in her pouch for a medi-gel pack. As the salarian sagged, half propped on the wall, Shepard crouched in front of him, already snapping the pack open.

"What happened? Why were they shooting at you?" Miranda asked. The man blinked, clearly in shock both emotional and physical.

"I…I don't know. They told us to leave and then just started shooting. Didn't give us any time. Some were jumping out of the windows to get away from the dogs…"

"The FENRIS?" Shepard asked gently, carefully shifting his hand and slathering his wound with the medi-gel to seal it and stop the bleeding. She wasn't a doctor but she'd seen enough gunshots in her time to know he'd probably survive. It looked like it had caught mostly muscle, and with the bleeding halted he wasn't in danger of dying in the next few minutes.

"Yes…I…they're shooting at everyone. Nassana ordered them-"

"That's enough," Shepard said quietly, finishing with his wound. "You have your omni-tool?"

"Y-yes…"

"Use it to call some rescue workers in," she told him. "Stay put until they get here, try not to move too much."

"What if the guards come back?" he asked.

"I'll take care of the guards," she said, anger in her voice but hardly directed at him. "And I'm heading up to pay Ms. Dantius a visit. I'll clear this place out floor by goddamn floor if I have to. You just stay here and get help on the way, all right?"

"Th-thank you."

"You really got a soft spot for civvies, don't you?" Zaeed asked after they'd left the salarian, heading deeper into the building.

"You telling me that shooting unarmed people in the back is your cup of tea, Massani?" Shepard asked pointedly. The air between them was weighty with static a moment. They both knew the answer to that question. Zaeed had been willing to let an entire refinery's worth of civilians burn to death over his quest for vengeance.

It was still a subject of contention between the two of them, and Massani knew better than to actually answer that question honestly. Fortunately, Shepard didn't press it, looking away from him before gesturing at the nearest elevator bank.

"Most of the elevators look locked down, at least on this level. We're going to have to rely on the stairs."

"How many floors is it again?" Miranda asked.

"Few hundred or so. Afternoon stroll back in boot," Shepard said, giving her a cheeky grin. "Don't worry, I doubt the lifts are locked down for every floor. If Nassana has her security sweeping the building then she'll want to keep them mobile. For now, it's the stairs…and keep your ears open for more guards or civvies."

"What about the assassin?"

"If he's any good, then we're not going to see hide or hair of him," Shepard replied. "C'mon. Let's move."

* * *

><p>By the time they were halfway up the tower they'd found two more groups of salarian civilians, hiding from the guards and terrified. One managed to shove a pistol into Shepard's face a breath before he fainted dead-away. His brother, crouched over him and fanning his face, apologized. Shepard relieved him of the pistol and directed the small group downstairs.<p>

The lift on this particular floor worked, but only took them up about ten flights before locking down. As they emerged from it, they spotted a single guard. He was pacing back and forth in front of one of the huge plate glass windows that lined all the outer walls. His helmeted head was down, but they could hear him as he spoke through his suit radio connection.

"Don't worry, I got it covered. He's not getting past here. I know what I'm doing. No. I'm telling you, it's secure. No one is getting past us. It's all about instincts. Mine are honed to a fine edge. Seriously. I can hear a fucking mouse fart from a mile away. Ain't nobody stands a chance up here. Ok. Sure. One hour."

The whole time he was talking and pacing, Shepard, Miranda and Zaeed were walking across the room toward him. When he mentioned hearing a mouse fart from a mile away, they were less than five yards from the man, and Zaeed gave Shepard an disbelieving look. Shepard smirked, drawing her pistol. The moment the guard was off his radio, she ratcheted in a new heat sink and planted the muzzle against his helmet.

"Turn around, nice and slow," she ordered.

"Fuck," the guard mumbled, slowly turning with his hands up.

"Fucking mouse fart, was that it?" Zaeed asked sarcastically. "Instincts honed to a fine edge?"

"Fuck you," the man said tiredly.

With both Miranda and Zaeed covering him, Shepard lowered her pistol and reholstered it. "So, Mr. Instincts…perhaps you can tell me where the assassin is."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said stubbornly, folding his arms.

"Oh, I think you do," she said. "I think your boss caught wind that someone was coming after her pretty little tuzi tun and did a little bit of a panic dance. I think you know _exactly_ what I'm talking about."

"Toozee…_what_?" he asked. "Look, lady…just take your friends and piss off. I'm not telling you shit, ok? I got twenty guys right in the next room. You open fire on me and they'll be on your heads before you can say 'oops'."

"That so?" Shepard asked. She stepped closer, moving toe to toe with the guard. Nervous but trying to act nonchalant, the man stepped back a pace, closer to the window as he folded his arms.

"That's so," he replied coolly.

"You and your men have been gunning down civilians," she said in a low voice, her dark brown eyes glimmering with mayhem. "Shooting unarmed workers in the back."

"Hey, we do what we're told," he retorted. "We warned those fucking frog-eyes. It's not our fault if they move too slow."

Shepard's glare burned a moment, before she took half a step back. Mistaking the gesture for withdrawal, he straightened a little, smirking behind his face-plate.

Whipping her knee up to her chest, Shepard's boot planted in his chest-plate with force, sending him reeling backward. Glass shattered and the merc let out a single cry of startlement as he plummeted out into the night air, tumbling over a hundred stories to his death.

Leaning a little, Shepard looked down into the darkness, at the street lit so far below, the shape of the guard's body all but invisible from this height.

"_Oops_."


	33. Chapter 33

A/N: Sorry for the delay, and for the shortness. This was supposed to be longer but...well, bad week. Hopefully tomorrow and Friday will be back to your usually scheduled Effectiveness :)

* * *

><p>Shepard's boots made faint little ghosts on the dark polished wood floors. A gold insignia was inlaid upon it, Dantius's own initials entwined like lovers in a display of pure arrogance and narcissism. Blood patted down on it lightly as Shepard wiped her cheek and flicked her gloved fingers. The gash wasn't bad, little more than a scratch, but the tickle of blood was irritating.<p>

The great doors were the old fashioned kind, hung on actual hinges. The lock, however, was top of the line with a full holographic security interface. Stepping past a receptionist's desk Shepard fastened down her helmet again and lifted her rifle, covering the doors as she nodded at Miranda. The dark haired Australian quickly hacked the door lock and with a not-so-subtle slam of his boot, Zaeed kicked it open.

There was the distinct ratchet of weapons from within but no actual gunfire.

"I'm coming in," Shepard called out. "I'm armed. Don't shoot at me and I won't fucking erase _you_."

Edging around the door Shepard stayed within stepping distance of cover, just in case someone inside got smart and tried to fire. She quickly scanned the three tense mercs and the single civilian, all clustered behind a console desk big enough to be a king-sized bed.

Normally Shepard's response to having guns aimed at her was blow the faces off of the ones doing the aiming. It was just good sense, good tactics, and a reflex hammered into every Alliance soldier from the moment they signed their enlistment papers. If someone presents a threat your top priority is to eliminate that threat, at any cost. Oddly enough, however, she felt little threat from these bozos even though they were holding guns on her, and when none of them tensed to shoot she didn't act immediately to empty their skulls.

All three wore the same armor as the fucks she'd been taking down all over the building and all three, even the asari, looked skittish as hell, wide-eyed and nervous. The civvie was another asari wearing a nice suit. Shepard didn't need any formal introductions to know this was Nassana Dantius, a woman she'd talked to but never before seen.

"We can discuss this," Nassana said tersely. "There isn't a single matter under the stars that cannot be talked through and rectified without violence."

"Is that so?"

"Please, we're all rational people. Let's behave civilly."

"As civilly as you did when you used me to take down your sister?" Shepard demanded. Nassana blinked, then her eyes narrowed as she tried to see past Shepard's face-plate.

"Commander _Shepard_…? But…you're dead!"

"I feel pretty lively for a corpse. Lively enough to erase your security all through the building," Shepard told her. "Gunning down your own goddamn workers, Nassana? I should put a bullet in you right now for that alone!"

"Listen, we can _talk _about this," Nassana hedged. "Is it credits? I can give you as much as you want, _three times_ what you're being paid."

Shepard scowled blackly. "I told you _before_, Dantius…I'm not an assassin after creds or some goddamn merc thug-"

"And yet you're here to take me out," Nassana retorted. "You've wiped out all of my guards and now you're here, gun pointed at my head. Someone _paid_ you, Shepard…or is this just your weak idea of vengeance, a healing of your wounded pride because of our little arrangement-"

"_Arrangement?_ You lied to me, had me take out your own _sister_," Shepard snarled. "You made me look like a fucking _patsy_!"

"So _murder_ is the only response?"

Shepard's smile was as sharp as a blade, as cool as ice, as she lowered her rifle. "_I'm_ not here to kill you, Nassana, but I would like to remind you of what I said during our last little conversation."

"What's that?"

"I said you had better hope to God that you never see me face to face, because I would be the _last_ thing you see."

As if on cue, a shadowy form suddenly dropped from an access vent on the ceiling, making no sound even as he landed. In a breath, he had all three guards dead. Taking Nassana's arm he pulled her around and in toward himself, as if drawing her into a dance.

There was a muffled gunshot, and slowly the asari woman sagged. Stepping forward a pace, the assassin laid her almost reverently back on her console, folding her hands over her stomach before he took a step back, bowing his head.

"I love it when I'm right," Shepard cocked half a grin at Miranda, before looking at the drell. "Thane Krios, I take it?"

The assassin said nothing, and after a moment, Shepard cocked her head. "What…are you doing?"

"Praying," he replied, his voice holding that faint reverberation all drell possessed. "Prayers for the wicked should never be overlooked."

"For her? She hardly seems to deserve one."

"Not for her. For me."

"Oh yeah? Might wanna make mention of me in there somewhere too then. I need all the prayers I can get."

The drell said nothing, and Shepard shipped her rifle. After a moment he lifted his head. "I _am_ Thane Krios," he affirmed, as if it were even necessary. "You've come a long way to find me."

"I want your help," Shepard replied. "I'm putting a team of specialists together to go against the Collectors, and your name came up."

His gaze was weighty as he watched her, eyes unblinking and dark. "Confronting the Collectors may mean passing through the Omega Four relay. No ship that has done so has ever returned."

"I know, but they're abducting human colonies, and may be working for an even greater threat. Hundreds of thousands of my people have vanished."

He looked pensive, and she shook her head. Walking over she leaned on the console next to Dantius's dead body, regarding him. "I'm not doing this stupid," she promised. "But I need the best team if we're going to stand a chance. That means _you_."

"Low survival odds don't concern me," he replied, meeting her gaze.

"They tend to concern everyone else, why not you?"

"I am dying," he said bluntly, his tone never changing. He could have been talking about the sunset just beyond the windows, or how his houseplants grew in the winter. It was a simple statement of fact that took her off-guard a moment.

Nodding, she straightened. "I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for your time. We'll be moving on."

"Do you not still want my help?" he asked. "I am strong and healthy enough at the moment. My condition should not hinder the mission."

She paused, knitting her brows. "You still want to help? I'd figure if your time was short you'd want to spend it in the company of-"

"Friends?" he asked, shaking his head. "Family? I have done many dark things in my lifetime. I am trying to make this galaxy a brighter place before I die. Helping you would accomplish that. I will join you…free of charge."

"Good, but if that's what you're trying to do…why the hesitation?" she asked.

He shook his head. "This was to be my last mission," he admitted. "I felt with this, I had made my closure, my peace…that this would be all that was left. I did not expect, in truth, to survive it. It takes a moment of…adjustment."

"Oh. Well, good news then," Shepard told him. "You probably _won't_ survive ours."

* * *

><p>"Liara, it will be all right," Feron soothed as he watched the asari woman pacing back and forth, clearly nervous, clearly troubled.<p>

The transmission room was small, and empty save for them. Feron was standing outside of the scope of the transmitters so he would not be seen, but he had lingered to offer Liara moral support.

"I would feel better if it were not such a complete unknown," she told him. "I do not know if he knows anything about me, or what he has been told. His reaction could be-"

"Anything," he agreed. "But he's millions of miles away on a different planet. He can't…"

He broke off as the signal light began to flash, nodding encouragingly to her as she stiffened. "Good luck, Liara. I will be right here."

The interface brightened, the grid transmitting Liara's image to the compound on Tuchanka even as light formed the shape of a large krogan boy in front of the asari.

He was dark of coloring, iron gray with black plates and startling green eyes. He inclined his head a little as he regarded her, his expression difficult to translate.

_Then again, krogan are __**always**__ hard to read. Wrex was no exception_.

"Dundrin Thug…" she greeted. "Thank you for meeting with me."

"I was curious," he rumbled. "I know much of you."

"You…you do?" she asked. "I…suppose Gellian told you?"

"Mother put pictures in my head. I know of you and of Benezia. You're some kind of…doctor? You read a lot."

"Yes," she agreed, trying to keep things as neutral as possible. So far he didn't seem hostile but angering him would not get her the answers she wanted. "You have my condolences…on the passing of your mother."

"She was sick," he stated as if it were nothing. "What do you want?"

"I wanted to talk to you," she replied, "and…to talk to m…y-your sister, if it is possible."

"Eír? She is not here. She left with Shrive, days ago. Why do you want to talk to her?"

"We have the same mother," she said. "I…wanted to get to know her, and to know you. See if there is anything I can do to help you."

"I don't need help," he snuffed. "I have a clan, a teacher and a Warlord, brothers. I am fine. Eír…she is on her own, except for Shrive. Mother wanted me to stay with her, to protect her, but Eír said we had to make our own paths, that mine was here. She was right, but she is still out there alone, and…"

He broke off, scowling. Liara nodded in understanding.

"And you worry…"

"Eír _might_ want to speak to you," he admitted. "She told me they were heading to Omega for a short while, and from there, to some…some planet where Shrive has a friend, I think. They weren't sure. Said they'd contact me once they'd settled down, once my training was done."

"Omega…do you have a contact number for her, for her omni-tool perhaps?"

He bobbed a nod and activated his own, sending the information to hers. "There. Up to her if she talks to you."

"I appreciate it so much, Thug…thank you. I know you say you have no need of me, but if you ever do…please, do not hesitate to ask."

"Save it for Eír," Thug grumped. "I'm fine."

And the call ended, just like that. Thug's holographic form faded away as he terminated the connection. As Liara regarded her omni-tool, Feron approached. "You going to try calling her now?"

Liara bobbed her head. "I must…before I lose my nerve again, start second guessing."

She attempted to put the call through, but after a few moments it dropped, its status flashing as 'unavailable'. She tried again, with the same result.

"She may still be travelling," Feron told her. "Or maybe she just turned it off. She's young, in love…might just not want to be disturbed."

"I…will try again in a few hours," Liara agreed reluctantly. "I have work I should be catching up on, anyway."

"You'll talk to her, don't worry," Feron reassured. "You'll find her."

* * *

><p>"Shepard, seriously…it's not going to bite you," Kasumi said with a bemused smile.<p>

"Oh yeah, because _that's_ what I'm worried about," she replied sarcastically. She was standing in the middle of her small gym, holding the katana sword that Kasumi had given her balanced on the palms of her hands.

"Then what's the problem?" she asked.

"Kasumi, this thing is extremely old," Shepard replied. "I feel like it'll break if I breathe on it wrong."

Kasumi shook her head, setting her own blade aside before taking Shepard's from her. She drew it out of the wooden sheath, turned, and slammed the blade against the metal bench nearby as hard as she was able. The sword rang loudly.

Turning back to Shepard she showed it to her. "You see? Not so much as a scratch. This is a Hānzo blade, Shep. He built to last. So long as you don't toss it into a volcano, this blade will outlive _you_."

She passed it back to Shepard, then picked up her own again. "Give it a few test swings, feel the weight of it."

Shepard was scrutinizing the blade, amazed there wasn't so much as a knick in the edge of it. She looked up when Kasumi cleared her throat, then gave the weapon a little sweep.

"It's so light…"

"Think of it as an extension of your arm, of your body," Kasumi told her, demonstrating a stance, moving her own sword slowly in front of her chest. "It's no different. Let it speak to you."

Shepard mimicked her motion, carefully extending her sword. It was not a new concept, really. Her weapons' trainers had emphasized that pistols and rifles were also nothing but extensions of the wielder, this was merely a different application of the same principle.

She followed Kasumi's motions silently and as precisely as she could, well aware she was nowhere near as graceful as her companion. Shepard's body had been honed for blunter tactics…she was designed to throw punches of force, not of finesse. The gentle movements were oddly exhausting given what they were.

"Not too bad, Shep. You're getting it," Kasumi encouraged as she straightened. "It's going to be a little while before we'll actually fight each other with these…last thing we need is you losing an ear."

As Shepard resheathed the katana, Kasumi set hers aside and picked up a pair of wooden swords, tossing one to Shepard. "Here. We can beat each other to a happy pulp with these instead. Get the rudimentaries of combat down."

An hour later saw Shepard dripping with sweat, teeth grit and a feral fire in her eyes as she swept the wooden training sword at Kasumi again. The thief expertly dodged it, but her return blow was blocked with enough force to make her teeth rattle.

"You don't connect much but when you do…you're like an earthquake," Kasumi teased.

"Well, if you'd stop doing all that fucking flowing, bending…'be like a flower in the wind' shit I'd be able to hit you more often," Shepard grumped back, planting the tip of the wood sword on the ground and leaning on it, trying to catch her breath. Kasumi laughed.

"I think we've done enough for today. You pick things up fast, Shepard. Soon _you'll _be a flower in the wind too."

"Yeah…right now I feel like a fucking pig in the sty," Shepard snorted, drawing her forearm over her face. "Next time, we _box_."

"Deal," Kasumi smiled. As Shepard parked on the bench, picking up her water and dumping half of it over her head before taking a drink, Kasumi returned the practice swords to the wall and picked up her own Hānzo, sitting down beside the Commander.

"You should have Samara teach you some things as well," she suggested. "And Thane, too. I bet both of them have some very good pointers on different fighting styles. Just think, you'd be able to kill people in four different languages."

"Mu gou," Shepard smirked.

"Baka," Kasumi shot back. Shepard laughed, then squinted as she tried to remember.

"Kutabare," she announced. Kasumi giggled.

"Baita."

"Uh…shit. Um…_ah_! Kasumi wa…futotte rushi, taido…uh…mo warui shi…tabako mopu…shit….mopukapuka suu shi!"

Kasumi's jaw dropped with a mock gasp of indignation, and she reached over and slapped Shepard's knee. "I am _not_ fat and if someone smokes too much, it's _you_!"

Shepard snickered. "Is that so?"

"Yes, that's _so_," Kasumi giggled. "Where did you even learn that? I didn't teach you that!"

"I _do_ have access to the extranet you know," Shepard grinned, then turned, aiming the water bottle at her friend, before squeezing it. A spray of water slapped Kasumi right in the face, and the thief gasped, before retaliating with her own water bottle.

A moment later, Miranda's voice interrupted the full on water brawl. _{Commander, the Illusive Man wishes to speak to you. He says it's urgent.}_

Shepard groaned, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, ok. I'll be up in a minute."

"It's a draw, anyway. We're both out of water," Kasumi said, wiping off her face before she picked up a towel, pitching it at her friend.

Shepard caught it, tossing her empty bottle toward the reclamation unit before mopping off her face, slinging her towel around her shoulders. "I'd better go see what the asshole wants."

"I'll clean up in here. Try not to have _too_ much fun," Kasumi grinned.

Shepard headed down to the command deck, fluffing the towel over her wet hair as headed into the conference room. As the holographic interface took hold she narrowed her eyes at the Illusive Man, hands gripping each end of the towel slung over her neck.

Almost the instant he appeared, he began speaking. "Shepard, one of our colonies in the Terminus just went dark."

"Dark?" she asked, instantly straightening.

"We've lost all communication with the colony on Horizon. The last time this happened, Ferris Fields was abducted. It looks like this colony is the next on the Collectors' agenda. If they're not already there, they will be soon."

"Are we the closest ship?"

"Not the closest but the fastest and the best equipped. Please tell me Dr. Solus has those countermeasures ready."

"He was close to something but I'm not sure _how_ close, I never got final word," Shepard replied. "Jesus fuck, man…a general distress should be going out to _every_ military vessel in range-"

"To do what? Be cut down by the Collector ship? Be abducted right along with the colonists? The _Normandy_ can be there within an hour, and you are the only one that has the equipment, intel, and crew needed to even _begin _handling the threat. Besides, any non-human military vessel would ignore us, and any Alliance vessel would refuse to enter the Terminus without forms signed in triplicate. You're their only hope, Shepard."

Shepard swore again, and turned on her heel to leave, already opening her mouth to call out for Joker.

"Shepard, wait! There's one more thing," The Illusive Man said urgently, drawing her to a halt. She turned her head and glared at him.

"What?"

"Ashley Williams is on Horizon."

Her face went dark, eyes dangerous as she strode back toward him. "_Ash?_ What the hell is _she_ doing there?"

"Officially she's there as part of an outreach program between the Alliance and the colonies," he replied calmly. "I believe that's just a cover. It's more likely that she's researching the abductions herself, on behalf of the Alliance."

"And it's what…just a fucking _coincidence_ that the Collectors suddenly chose a colony that has one of my former crew on it?" Shepard spat venomously. Turning again she strode out, whipping the towel off from around her neck and snapping it against the wall as she went past, the motion one of pure frustration.

"Joker! Get us on a course for the Horizon colony in the Terminus_, ma shang_! I want to be there _yesterday_!"

_{Yes ma'am, adjusting course now. ETA…looks like forty-five minutes.}_

Slapping the door interface with her palm, Shepard strode into the lab, her eyes fixing immediately to their only hope of surviving this mess.

"Tell me you _have_ something, Mordin. We've got a colony dark and Collectors heading in right now. We need those countermeasures."

The salarian glanced up at her with remarkable calm, and then smiled. "Yes."

* * *

><p>"Commander, I would like to accompany you."<p>

The voice was like a calm center in an angry storm. The CIC was bustling as they drew near to Horizon, scans already picking up a large Collector vessel parked just outside the colony. Both Miranda and Shepard were barking orders, and they would be in range to send the shuttle down in just a few minutes. Shepard was already half-dressed in her hard-suit, waiting on Mordin to finish the tweaks to her chest-plate.

Yet through all this noise and tumultuousness, Samara's voice cut through and was immediately heard, even though she didn't speak loudly. Turning her head to look at the Justicar, Shepard straightened.

"I thought you might want to stay aboard a while, acclimatize yourself to the ship and the mission before diving into the fire headfirst."

"Diving into the fire, as you say, is what a Justicar does, Commander," Samara replied smoothly. "I would like to join your ground team."

Shepard nodded. "Very well. Get suited up, and see Mordin, then meet me down in the cargo bay. Shuttle leaves in ten minutes."

"Who else do you want to go with you?" Miranda asked as Samara headed away.

"I got biotics and firepower, I need some brute force," Shepard replied. "Get Grunt. He should be happy to pound some faces in and I get the feeling there are going to be a lot of faces that need pounding down there."

* * *

><p>The man was pale, warm sunlight glowing off of muscles tensed for running, an expression of alarm or surprise in his unblinking eyes. A soft blue hand lightly touched a cheek as hard and still as alabaster, and grey eyes met green as the man's gaze edged painfully to hers.<p>

"They are aware, Shepard," Samara stated in concern, turning to look at Shepard. The human woman was peering at another colonist nearby, this one collapsed in a position of agony on the ground.

"This is…some kind of stasis field maybe? A paralytic toxin?" Shepard replied, before she crouched, examining the fallen's eyes. When they slowly fixed to hers she nodded.

"Don't worry. I don't know if you can hear me but we're here to stop them, all right? We're not going to let them take you."

Lightly touching the man's cheek she straightened and looked around. They had crossed half the colony already…a colony crawling with Collectors, of which they had taken down their fair share. These, however, were the first actual colonists they'd found.

The great Collector ship was looming overhead, still half a mile away at the edge of the colony, big enough that its crest was wreathed in swirling clouds. Hearing the now-familiar drone, Shepard readied her rifle.

"We got incoming!"

"Good!" Grunt grinned, ratcheting his shotgun. "I want to step on more bugs!"

Collector soldiers appeared over a wall. Landing at the far side of the courtyard they immediately moved for cover, even as Shepard and her two companions did. As she pressed her back to a water reclamation unit, Shepard felt a moment of gratitude that she was not afraid of bugs.

That's what they were, the Collectors…big, goddamn, human –shaped bugs. Naturally armored with a brown, shiny, chitinous exoskeleton, the smallest of them so far stood at six feet. They had rudimentary wings tucked on their backs…at least, these soldiers did. While not capable of true flight they could lift themselves through the air several feet off the ground for a short time. This was not the first time a patrolling squad had dropped in on them unexpectedly.

As their position was peppered with gunfire she could hear Grunt's laughs as he ducked from cover to cover, each transfer punctuated by a heavy whump from his shotgun.

"Boy has some skills," she smirked to herself, before taking aim as well and cutting two of the soldiers in half. Just before she dropped back down, she noticed three of the Collectors seemed to be trying to hack their way into a small building nearby. Switching her assault rifle for her sniper, she set her crosshairs on the head of the nearest one, and deleted it.

As it collapsed in a splash of dark ichor she shifted her aim, eliminating one of its companions before her position was suddenly inundated with weapons fire. Ducking back quickly, she grinned to herself, the expression terse and bitter.

Clearing her thermal clip, she turned as she heard a break in the gunplay, then lifted a brow. The third Collector had abandoned the door and was rushing forward toward Samara, who was standing in the midst of the courtyard, surrounded by liquid blue. No fewer than four of the remaining soldiers were lifted into the air by her biotic energy, hurled to lifeless wreckage against a wall. She had not, however, seen the charging soldier.

Snapping her rifle up to her shoulder Shepard drew a bead and knocked the fucker down just as it leveled its weapon at the asari biotic. It hit the ground, one eye missing in a wash of black fluid, but it was not out. Struggling, it rolled to its side, struggling to get to its feet.

Rising from her own cover, Shepard strode forward, taking another bead on it, and hit it again. Chunks of carapace went flying in a rain of thick ink, and the soldier slumped at last, lifeless.

"Thank you, Commander," Samara noted as Shepard lowered her gun.

"My pleasure," Shepard replied, eyes scanning the yard for any more hiding soldiers. "They were trying to hack that door. We should-"

****SHEPARD****

She heard her name spoken in a deep baritone, the sound itself seeming to slice into her skull like a band-saw. She gasped in surprised pain, the heel of her hand planting to her temple.

"Shepard?" Grunt slung his shotgun against his shoulder, heading her way, even as Samara turned toward her, frowning.

"Commander?"

****SHEPARD****

She gasped again, then grit her teeth, lifting her rifle to her shoulder as she whipped around, aiming it.

A Collector stood a dozen yards away. Instead of white, his eyes were a strangely luminescent yellow. His exoskeleton was cracked and seemed…stretched, somehow, as if a larger creature had tried to put it on as a costume.

****WE ARE HARBINGER****

The sound nearly stumbled her to her knees as pain rocketed through her skull. Desperately she opened fire on the strange drone before actually dropping her weapon, everything in her brain seeming to flash white with agony.

****WE KNOW THIS HURTS YOU****

Then, just that quickly, it was gone, the fading thunder of Grunt's shotgun blast echoing through the complex. Panting, she groped out for her rifle, struggling up to her feet as her eyes cleared. Someone took hold of her arm, and as her glove scrubbed under her nose, it came away bloody.

The strange drone was on the ground, dissolving in a hiss of acid much as Saren's corpse had once dissolved.

"Shepard, are you all right?" Samara asked with concern.

"I'm fine…" she replied, wiping her nose again. "D-did you hear that? Did you hear it talk?"

"I heard nothing," the biotic admitted, and glanced at Grunt, who shrugged.

"Didn't hear a damn thing."

"It sounded like it was in my head," Shepard replied. "It knew my name, called itself…_Harbinger_."

"This is a concerning turn of events," Samara murmured. Shepard tugged away from her, not ungently, and cracked her neck.

"I'm fine now…I'm all right. They…they were trying to get into that building. There's got to be something or someone in there they want. Let's check it out."


	34. Chapter 34

The building, it turned out, was some kind of maintenance shed. A few farming vehicles and some rovers were in various states of repair, tools scattered about. Beyond that, the place looked deserted.

Face pinched, an aching little pain still stabbing her sinuses, Shepard scowled as she panned her rifle around the room. She was in no mood for games.

"Come out," she ordered. A moment later a pale human man peeked around one of the parked vehicles.

"You're human?" he asked. She lowered her rifle, squinting at him.

"Some of us are. Anyone else hiding in here?"

"N-no, it's just me…" he replied, then seemed to get agitated. "What are you doing here? They'll follow you, they'll come right in here!"

"They already knew you were here. They were trying to get in," she retorted.

"This guy is a weak coward," Grunt huffed with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Let's go, there are more things to fight."

"In a minute," Shepard told him, then looked at the man. "Can you tell me what exactly happened? You've got huge anti-craft guns but the Collector ship landed anyway…"

The man moved over to one of the benches, hands shaking as he sat down. "Goddamn Alliance gave us those guns," he said with a bitter lilt to his mouth. "Had to dig an enormous underground pit for the power systems, took us three months to get them installed and what happens? The targeting system doesn't work. We've been trying to get it fixed forever. That goddamn Williams has her thumb so far up her ass-"

Shepard stepped forward, eyes narrowing dangerously. "You mean Ashley Williams?"

"Yeah," he replied, seeming completely unaware of the fire being glared in his direction. "The Alliance rep they sent along with those damn guns. She wouldn't know a targeting pin switch-board from a hole in her-"

He yelped as Shepard suddenly snagged the front of his shirt, hauling him off his chair and pinning him to the wall. "Hey, _leggo_!"

"You _ever_ speak of Ashley Williams like that again, and I'll eliminate even the _possibility_ of you," she snarled. "That woman has put her life on the line again and again to protect whiny little piss ants like _yourself_."

Even as she glared into his terrified face, Shepard could feel the weight of both Grunt and Samara staring at her. If she wiped this pathetic civvie off the face of the map, what would be the reaction? Grunt would cheer her on, doubtlessly, but Samara would consider it unjust. She would do nothing now, bound by her oath, but after that oath was done with…

Oddly enough, it wasn't the fact that she might have to go toe-to-toe with the powerful asari at some future date that stayed her hand. It was the sheer weight of disappointment she imagined she could feel from the woman that seemed to cut deeper.

Besides, the guy was unarmed and a civvie. It would go against every fiber of who Shepard was to kill him. Beat the ever-loving _shit_ out of him, _that _she could do…but not kill him.

"I'm sorry, jeez…leggo of me!" the civvie whined. Shepard released him with a frustrated shove, stepped back.

"Do you know where she is now?"

Rubbing his chest petulantly, the fellow shook his head. "I-I don't know. I remember seeing her when the ship came down. She was-"

"She was _what_?"

He shrugged, then sighed with reluctance. "She was covering the other colonists so they could try and get to the safe house," he admitted. "Shooting at those swarms. I saw her get bit, go all stiff-like…then I ducked in here and sealed the door. That's all I know."

Shepard stepped away from him, turning toward her companions. "If we can get those guns online we can hit that ship directly, disable it maybe," she told them. "We need to get to the targeting systems and see if we can't manage to re-open communications to the _Normandy_. EDI can scrub and recalibrate the system faster than any of us could."

"We must remain cautious," Samara urged gently. "That strange drone…the one that managed to incapacitate you-"

"That _won't_ happen again," Shepard grit, then seemed to slump a little. "But…if it does…"

"We know what to look for," Samara nodded. She knew just as well as Shepard did that this wasn't simply a mission they could abandon. Risk or not, they had to continue on. Lives were at stake.

With a grateful nod, Shepard glanced back at the civvie. "We're going to hit those towers, get them online if we can and disable that ship. Stay here, and lock the door behind us."

"_That_ won't be a problem," he replied.

Leaving the building, Shepard paused only to make sure the lock switched back to red before they continued on. Eerie silence surrounded them as they worked their way through courtyards and pre-fabs toward weapons control, and Shepard felt like her very teeth were on edge. Her gut, her usually infallible warning system, was completely in a knot, every fiber of her being screaming 'danger'…and yet there was nothing to be seen.

Empty buildings. Still air. No sign of Collector soldiers, no sign of those swarms that had been swirling about when they first arrived.

"Something doesn't feel right, Shepard," Grunt murmured, only echoing her sentiments.

"I feel it too," she told him. "Move slowly. Check all corners. Keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. The targeting systems aren't too far from here-"

"Shepard, there…do you see it?" Samara interrupted, pointing in the distance. Following her gaze, Shepard's eyes landed on what she at first took for packing crates…before she realized they were made of the same strange chitinous material the Collectors seemed to use for everything.

Moving cautiously that direction, the three kept their weapons ready, but nothing showed itself. Reaching the strange 'crates', Shepard gestured at Grunt and Samara to keep watch, as she shipped her weapon and approached the nearest one.

About seven feet long, the thing resembled more a pod than a crate. Most of it was that hard polysaccharide, but the top seemed to be made of a strange semi-transparency, revealing only half-seen shadows beyond, nothing clear. Taking a chance, she cupped her hand around her eyes, putting her face in close and trying to see within.

A tiny little hand suddenly plastered up against the transparency, fingers damp and pale but undeniably human.

_Little_ human.

"Fuck," she gasped. "They're transport pods of some kind. The Collectors must be loading the colonists into them to carry them to the ship."

"Shepard, what are you doing?" Samara asked as the commander began to pry at the pod, trying to find a seam.

"There's a fucking _kid_ in here," she replied, hauling her helmet off and setting it aside. Finding the seam but unable to pry it open, she unslung her rifle and set the safety, before slamming the butt into the joint. Again, then again, she slammed her weapon into the pod, then reshipped it, trying to pry it once more. This time, it reluctantly broke loose. Thin gas swirled out as she hefted the pod open, the smell like the wash of old mildew from a pile of forgotten laundry. Reaching into the pod she took hold of the child and lifted it out. Tiny, trembling arms wound around her neck.

"Shh, I gotcha," she whispered, going down to her knees and holding the child against her a moment. It was a little girl, perhaps no older than four or five years. Her long hair was damp and greasy, and some strange goo seemed to be clinging to her clothes. Shepard could see inside the pod now, and the interior seemed slathered with the stuff.

_Some kind of preservation technique, maybe? _

Drawing back just a little she looked at the child's face, stroking her hair back. She looked unharmed, just frightened and confused. She was still shaking, and latched back on to Shepard's neck with a whine.

"Hey, it's all right, sweetie," Shepard murmured. "You're safe now. What's your name?"

"E-E-Esmé," the child whispered, shivering. "The…the bugs-"

"The bugs aren't going to hurt you anymore," Shepard promised. "My name is Del. I'll keep them away from you, I swear."

"We can't carry a kid along with us," Grunt pointed out. "It's too dangerous."

"See if you can't get these other few pods open," Shepard told him. "There's got to be more colonists inside. Grown ones."

As he started prying open the containers, Shepard got to her feet, still holding little Esmé. Wishing she had something to wrap the child in she moved over to a corner, gingerly setting the girl down.

"No!" the child whined, clinging to her more tightly. As gently as she could, Shepard unwound her arms from around her neck, crouching in front of her.

"Shh, it'll be all right," she said. "I need to go help the people in the other boxes. I'll be right over there, you can see me the whole time. Ok? Can you be brave?"

The little girl looked terrified, but reluctantly nodded, hugging her arms around herself and drawing her knees up tightly, making herself as small as possible.

Shepard headed toward her companions, glancing back once to give the child a reassuring smile. Grunt had managed to get another pod open and lifted out an unconscious human man, also slimed. As he sat him down and started to work on the third pod, Shepard crouched and ran an omni-tool scan of the fellow.

"He's unconscious, but seems to be unhurt," she said, then reached out and lightly slapped the man's cheek. He stirred, coughing, then blinked. When he jolted in shock she grabbed his arm.

"Hey, take it easy. You're safe."

"Wh-what happened? Jonathan? _Esmé_?"

"Esmé's right over there," Shepard told him, gesturing to the child and then helping the man to his feet. As he stumbled toward the girl she rose and ran to him, flinging her arms around his legs.

"Grandpa!"

Drawing her pistol as she watched Grunt crack open the final pod, letting Samara tend to the teenage boy he lifted out. Shepard went back over to the older man. He was on his knees, hugging the child tightly, both still shaking.

"You know how to use a gun?" she asked. The civvie looked up at her, grim-faced before he nodded.

"Yeah, I can handle one."

"Good." She passed him the pistol, glancing over as the boy from the final pod started to cough, waking up. "I need you to take these two and head back in that direction. We've cleared out the colony this far but it's still not safe. Find a shady spot and hunker down. Rescue teams should be in shortly, as soon as we can get those guns online and disable that ship."

"Wh-what about the others?"

"We'll try and help anyone we can find but so far you've been it…the only mobile ones, anyway."

As the boy staggered over to them, the older man rose, catching hold of his arm and giving him a hug before looking at Shepard.

"You saved my grandchildren. I…after their mother died, I-…I can't thank you enough."

"I haven't saved anyone quite yet," Shepard said softly. "Go on. Take them somewhere safe. Someone will come find you once the colony is secure."

The teenage boy took Esmé from his grandfather and as he did, Shepard gave the girl a little smile, reaching out and touching her hair. "You keep being brave, ok kiddo?"

The civvies gone, Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose, then checked her rifle's clip. "Come on, let's keep moving."

* * *

><p>At first she thought the low groan was a wounded colonist. The odd electrical charge in the air had not abated, and her gut had not settled in its dance of warning, even after they'd saved the small family in the pods. They had reached a new cluster of pre-fabs without spotting a single Collector, a frozen civvie, or any more of those odd transport pods. The groan came from the open door of one of the pre-fabs, and even as Shepard heard it, Grunt turned his head that direction as well.<p>

"Smells funny," he rumbled. "Like…dry deep earth and…the air from a storm, maybe. Strange…"

Shepard squinted as she lifted her rifle to her shoulder, aiming it at the dark doorway, taking a hesitant step forward. When the shape appeared in the shadows, it looked like a man, but she recognized the odd shambling gait with a start, even before she spotted the faint blue light sheening from its eyes.

Her gunfire took both krogan and asari by surprise. Flame popped four times from the muzzle of her rifle and she could hear the dry _fwap_ as they struck home, but the shambling form didn't fall. Instead it increased speed, suddenly rushing forward out of the dark.

She stitched two more shots over its chest, a final one breaking its head apart like ceramic filled with ash. As the thing collapsed, she heard more groans lifting all around them.

"They're fucking husks," she snapped, sweeping her gun around. "And a fuck of a _lot _of them from the sound."

"They're not human?" Samara asked.

"Not anymore," Shepard replied. "Light 'em up!"

From the surrounding pre-fabs suddenly poured dozens of the twisted things, each a gray caricature of a human being, lined with glimmering cybernetics. Gunfire and biotics filled the air and half of the first wave collapsed, bodies breaking apart like old leaves. The sheer number soon overwhelmed their gunfire, however, and they found themselves falling back. Shepard grit her teeth as she continued to rake their number with bullets but too many were breaking through, and soon were too close to shoot.

Dropping her rifle she decked one with a roundhouse, stumbling it back. On her return swing her elbow slammed into the jaw of a second that was groping for her, breaking it loose. Teeth fell with soft pats, the broken hinge of bone dangling from the desiccated face but there was no reaction of pain, nothing but a faint stagger before it was reaching for her again. Driving the first one back once more with a kick to the chest, she grabbed the hanging mandible and ripped it off before jamming the end of it into glowing blue eyes.

Somehow she managed to reach her dagger, drawing her remaining pistol with her other hand, baring her teeth in a taut, maniacal grin. "Let's _dance_, fuckers."

The blade whipped, nearly decapitating one before sweeping in low and digging into the gut of another. The pistol barked and a head exploded. Ripping her blade out she turned and fired again, dropping another, slashing her blade over a reaching arm and driving it back with a kick before putting it down with another pair of well-placed shots.

Something swept over her head and she ducked, slamming her elbow into a back as she straightened, airing out yet another skull.

She could barely see through her face-plate, the air filled with dust and dry, ashen bits of husk. A hand groped over her helmet and she dug her blade into the mummified meat of a bicep, wrenching the arm away and laying a bullet into a temple before casting the body away from her. As it collapsed, writhing on the ground she removed more of its skull with a second shot, watching as it fell still. Glancing around quickly, she saw that there were no more husks on their feet. Grunt strode up to one that was still trying to crawl and unloaded a shotgun round into its face with a satisfied bark of triumph.

"By the Goddess-"

She heard Samara's voice and turned. Her face-plate filled with blue and something rammed into her, hard enough to lift her off her feet and send her crashing to the ground.

A form loomed just a few yards away, a form that at first her addled brain couldn't get around, other than to register that it was _big_.

Coughing, she scrambled back up to her feet even as Grunt also oriented on the target, baring his teeth in a growl as he lifted his shotgun.

"The fuck is _that_?" Shepard gasped, really seeing the monstrosity for the first time.

The thing was hideous, horrible. It was as if someone had taken a dozen of the very husks they'd just fought and melted them together in a twisted, nightmarish mutation that was slowly staggering toward them. Enormously top-heavy, the thing could only shuffle but all of its eyes were alight with manic intelligence, and when it lifted a pair of its hands, she could see they were bright with biotics.

A breath later those very biotics were sailing toward them again. Shepard leapt to the side to avoid the flashing wave of blue, then rolled. Her pistol barked three times, and she cursed as she saw the unmistakable spark of shields.

Samara, alive with her own power, sent a concussive wave toward the beast as the commander scrambled to her feet, shipping her pistol and snatching her rifle up off the ground. Thunder bloomed from both her gun and Grunts as they let loose on the nightmare, yet the shields continued to flash, the thing still coming on.

An idea came to her. Turning she ran toward one of the nearby benches, tossing aside her rifle again and snatching a grenade from her belt. "Samara!" she barked. "Boost!"

Not slowing, she leapt up onto the bench and then launched herself off of it. She felt the warm energy of biotics suddenly embrace her, thrusting her up and through the air, far higher and farther than she could ever have leapt on her own. Ten, fifteen feet high, Shepard felt her leap crest and the biotics fall away as her jump arced and began its descent.

She crashed hard into the monster, slinging an arm around one of its heads even as she set the grenade with her free hand. The thing writhed and shifted underneath her in a nauseating pulse, and she could feel teeth slipping over her hard-suit from a dozen different mouths. Long arms lifted up to tear her free, one grasping her leg even as she shoved the set grenade into the nearest gaping maw.

The hand on her leg hauled and she felt her grip torn away. For a moment the world swung upside down and then it went bright with fire, and she was flying again…straight into darkness.

* * *

><p>"Two more days," Shrive promised as she set out the plates and glasses. "Two more days and we'll be on our way to Aratoht and off this station."<p>

"I don't mind the station so much," Eír replied. "It's…_different_."

"Yeah, and every other asari on it is a stripper hanging from a pole," Shrive smirked. "It's no wonder our people have such a bad reputation."

"True," Eír admitted, then giggled and flung her arms around Shrive's waist from behind, hugging her. "But it's not Tuchanka, and I get you all to myself so…I have to like it just a little bit."

Shrive laughed, twisting in Eír's arms and holding her in return. "I suppose," she said. "I guess I just prefer being on a planet…feeling wind and dirt. And you will still have me all to yourself on Aratoht, too."

"Promise?" Eír asked, leaning forward just enough to kiss the other girl's chin.

"Of course I promise," Shrive murmured in return.

"And Teful is sure you have the job?" Eír asked, letting her lips trail down the side of Shrive's neck.

"Yes, it's in the bag," Shrive replied, letting her eyes fall closed. "The batarians aren't over fond of asari but it's not like we're humans. And training security troops…just my thing."

"Uh huh," Eír whispered, nuzzling in again, nibbling slightly. Shrive let out a soft laugh.

"You keep that up and dinner is going to get cold…_again_."

"Who needs dinner?" Eír teased, pulling her closer as she smirked, then kissed her properly. A moment later, a faint chirping broke through the air.

"Is that your omni-tool?" Shrive asked as the kiss broke. Eír sighed faintly in frustration, drawing back enough to look at the offending device.

"It's that strange ident again. It's not from Tuchanka…who else would keep calling me?"

"Why don't you _answer_ it and find out?" Shrive asked. Eír gave her a dry look and Shrive smiled before ducking forward, murmuring in her ear.

"Answer it while I finish dinner," she said. "Then you'll have me for the rest of the night, I promise."

"You drive a tough bargain," Eír smiled before drawing reluctantly back. As Shrive headed back into the small kitchenette, Eír accessed the call and set it to holographic project.

A shimmer of light resolved itself into another asari, a stranger. Eír blinked at her, brows knit a little. "Yes, who are you?"

"Is this…is this Eír?" the stranger asked.

"Yeah," Eír hedged. "Do I know you?"

"No…Thug gave me this contact number," the stranger replied. "My…my name is Liara. Liara T'Soni."

Eír blinked, stiffening and staring a moment. Liara T'Soni. Benezia's other daughter, the archaeologist…the one that Gellian thought so little of. She knew of her only through the vague tank imprints, the false history 'memories' and Gellian's rare, casual mentions.

"You are Benezia's daughter," she heard herself blurt. Shrive, overhearing, stepped out of the kitchenette, watching her with surprised concern.

"Yes…her _other_ daughter, from what I understand," Liara replied. "I…I only found out about you a couple of days ago, Eír…and about Gellian's death. I wanted to introduce myself, make sure you are all right."

"I…I'm…you are my _sister_," she said with dawning wonder, as the true implications finally filtered through her surprise.

"Yes, on a genetic level if nothing else," the older asari responded.

Eír's head was spinning. She had never dreamed she'd actually talk to Benezia's daughter. The imprints left by the tank were so flat, dry…having the three-dimensional reality in front of her was a surreal experience.

"Wh-where are you?" Eír asked, more emotion than she expected coming through her voice. "I'm…I'm all right, _we're_ all right, I mean, Shrive is here…did Thug tell you about Shrive? We're here on Omega and…where are you? Can I see you?"

"Shh, slow down love," Shrive murmured, moving closer but not interfering in the call.

"I am on a secure base," Liara replied. "Unfortunately I cannot disclose an exact location. Thug mentioned you might be on Omega, but that your final destination could lay elsewhere. I…if…if you wanted to meet…face to face, I mean…I could be on the station within twenty-four hours."

"Yes!"

"Eír," Shrive warned gently, but the girl ignored her.

"Yes, _please_…please, we are leaving in two days to go to Aratoht…Shrive got a job there, but we'll be here on Omega until then. If you can…please come. I want to talk to you, see you."

"I-will make arrangements," Liara replied. "I may have to bring a companion of my own, if that is all right?"

"Yes, yes, of course! We have a temporary apartment just off the main station plaza. I will send you the address."

Her fingers were shaking as she input the location into her omni-tool, sending it to Liara. The older asari looked at her own, then nodded.

"I have it. I will meet you tomorrow evening then…and we can talk."

As the call ended, Shrive moved over and touched her companion's arm. "Eír," she said softly. "Are you sure about this?"

"She's my sister, Shrive," Eír replied with a shake of her head. "I…I never had a sister before. Never spoke to anyone who actually _knew_ Benezia…well, except Mother but…she wouldn't tell me much. I…is it wrong of me? Is it strange that I want to know…about _her_, I mean?"

"Of course it isn't," Shrive soothed, taking her shoulders. "It's perfectly natural, Eír. But you have to be careful-"

"Careful? Why?"

"Because you are _forgetting_ something, love," Shrive said carefully. "Commander Shepard."

"Shepard?" Eír stiffened, face hardening as confusion faded away in the wake of understanding. "…Liara was there when Benezia died. When Shepard…"

"You still hate her," Shrive said sadly. "You still want to kill her…"

"I cannot help it," Eír bemoaned. "It is like…like trying to control hiccups. I do not want to but when I hear her name it…it just rises inside me. And it isn't even _my_ hatred, its Mother's…Mother's hatred she imprisoned inside of _me_…"

"And you _will _overcome it, Eír. You _will_ defeat it, rise above what Gellian had planned for you," Shrive said firmly, cupping the girl's face and looking intently into her eyes. "You just have to be careful tomorrow. Liara said she would bring a companion. If that companion is Shepard-"

Eír felt herself go cold. If it was Shepard, she didn't know if she'd be able to control herself. Seeing the woman in person, so soon…who knows what she would do? Even _she_ couldn't predict how she would respond if she came face to face with the commander.

"_You _will be there," she said after a moment's thought. "You can greet them. If it is Shepard, then you can warn me, warn _them_. I...want to kill her but it is not my own desire. Mother is dead and her desires must die with her. You must make them understand."

"All right, sweetie, all right," Shrive soothed with a nod. "I will be there, and I will run interference. We will take it as it comes."

* * *

><p>The taste of copper was the first thing she became aware of…then the distant, gentle snaps of her helmet being unfastened. She felt hands cradling her neck as it was drawn off, a soft breeze filtering across her face.<p>

She struggled her eyes open, blinking up at Samara, the asari peering down in concern.

"Commander…"

She tasted blood again. Shaking off a glove, she lifted her hand and lightly probed at her face. Her helmet face-plate had shattered on impact…probably with something hard-edged and pointy. She'd had to have hit it pretty damn hard to break the plate, and was probably lucky she even _had_ a goddamn face left.

"Be careful, there are still some shards embedded in your skin," Samara said, lightly plucking out the offending broken pieces even as she spoke. Shepard grimaced as she dropped her hand aside. Busted lip, busted nose flooding blood down her chin, and a small gash over her eye. Nothing too upsetting…she'd gotten worse during boxing matches in boot.

Her neck and shoulders ached a bit but she didn't think anything was broken. Carefully she pushed herself up into a sit, mopping at her bleeding nose. Given where she was laying, it looked like she'd landed face first into the edge of one of the heavy pre-fabs stairways. A half-dozen yards away, what was left of that twisted abomination was a pile of dust, meat, and char.

Samara tried to support her as she moved up to her feet but Shepard shook her head, drawing away a little. "I'm all right. Bit woozy but it'll pass."

"That thing…that thing was _wrong_, Shepard," Grunt mumbled, gesturing at the desiccated mess. Then he handed her the ruined helmet in his hand. "You look like you had a good fight. Too bad it was with a set of stairs."

Shepard shook her head, snatching the ruined helmet from his hand and looking over it. "What, you missed the great big walking pile of disgusting I tackled _before_ the stairs? Best check your eyesight, Grunt."

"Oh, I didn't miss _that_," he said, and bumped his big fist on her arm. "Shiagur would have been proud."

Shepard spit a mouthful of blood to the side, mopping off her face as best she could before tossing her ruined helmet away.

"Are these the colonists?" Samara asked, regarding the remains of the ruined husks, the abomination. "Why would the Collectors pack some of them into those containers, and yet turn others into these…"

"They didn't," Shepard said, then spat again, testing a tooth and deciding that it wasn't loose enough to come out. "I saw those things on Eden Prime…the little ones, anyway. They were made by impaling people on these spikes…the Alliance calls them 'dragon's teeth'. We haven't seen any of those here. My bet is these things came with the Collectors. Those dragon's teeth are Reaper-tech though…which kind of puts a pin in the idea that the Collectors are working for the Reapers. As if I needed any _more_ proof of that."

"Any species that does this sort of thing to another must be stopped, Shepard."

"A-fucking-men to _that_," Shepard agreed. "We still need to get those guns online and time is running out. Let's move."

* * *

><p>The targeting and automated control systems for the huge Alliance anti-craft guns were in a small, reinforced building just at the edge of the colony. The Collector ship was looming like some kind of monolithic portent of doom, its shadow casting dark over the building in the late afternoon. Once inside, Shepard accessed the communications port to boost her own comm signal, knowing that both EDI and Mordin had to be working on getting contact through the dampening signal being put out by the ship.<p>

"_Normandy_, this is Shepard. Can you read me?" she asked. A hiss of static came through and she grimaced, readjusting the frequency. "_Normandy_…this is Commander Shepard. Please respond."

_{…sssssss…ttth…mmmmm...JJJoooker Commander Shepard, are you receiving?}_

"That's affirmative Joker, I hear you," she said with relief. "EDI, we're at the targeting station for the colony's anti-craft guns. The guns are miscalibrated and we need to get them online…can you rectify?"

_{Errors in targeting software will take a short amount of time to correct,}_ came the response. _{It will take longer to fully power the guns to firing capacity, and I will be unable to mask the increased output. The enemy ship will detect it easily and no doubt send soldiers to address the threat.}_

"I'm not an _easy_ threat to address," Shepard replied. "Get on it. I need these guns fixed and that ship disabled _yesterday_. We'll hold this position secure."

_{Linking with the computer systems now, Shepard. ETA for full rectification, twenty minutes.}_

"All right," Shepard looked at the krogan and the justicar. "They're going to catch on to us fast, and as soon as they do, they're going to be throwing everything they've got at this position. We hold this building _no matter what_. Those guns have _got_ to get online…everything else is secondary."

Grunt grinned. So far, Shepard had kept her word. Their enemies were definitely worthy, and she had lead battles fierce enough to stir any krogan's blood. She didn't hesitate to rush into a fray, to confront impossible odds. For a human she had proven quite…tolerable, so far.

He was glad he hadn't killed her.


	35. Chapter 35

The metallic sound of each thermal clip as it landed on the ground was lost in the unending roar of gunfire, the never ceasing drone of wings as yet more closed in.

Samara was holding the door sealed with a biotic barrier, and Shepard and Grunt had taken up position at the windows. Dozens of Collector soldiers had landed in an attempt to assault the building and nearly that many had already died, each fallen corpse dissolving almost instantly until the ground was an acid-soaked mire. The acid seemed to lose its potency swiftly, however, as the new soldiers were stepping into the puddles and through the mud and gelatinous muck to try and reach the fortification, without seeming harm.

And the soldiers weren't the only ones.

Shepard mowed down three incoming husks, their ashen bodies collapsing as a new wave of Collectors landed. She dropped another thermal clip, the number of her spares rapidly dwindling in her mental countdown the more she fired.

"EDI!"

_{Ten more minutes, Commander.}_

More gunfire tore into the front of the pre-fab as the new squad started forward. Shepard and Grunt returned fire, dropping three of them before it happened again.

One of the soldiers was suddenly regarding them out of yellow eyes instead of white, its body seeming to swell, carapace cracking as its gaze seemed to fix to her.

****SHEPARD****

"_Ah_!" Shepard cried out in sudden surprised pain, the voice cutting through her already aching head. The force of it pulled her aim off and her last spate of shots went wild.

"Shepard!" Samara looked over in concern. "Grunt, it is happening again."

"I see it," he rumbled, and focused his fire on the strange, larger drone. Unlike the soldiers, however, this one seemed smarter, and quickly took cover, avoiding his fire.

****YOU CANNOT STOP US, SHEPARD** **

"_Ahhhh_, fuck _you_!" Shepard snarled, hand plastered just over her eye a moment before she hefted her gun again. She was not going to let this…_whatever_ it was…drop her or put her squad at risk. Fighting against the pain, the thunderous echo of it, she resumed fire, taking down two more soldiers that were charging for the door.

****I KNOW THIS HURTS YOU****

"_FUCK OFF!"_ she shouted, and raked her fire over the drone's cover.

****STOP FIGHTING US. SURRENDER AND WE WILL LET YOUR COMPANIONS GO. SURRENDER TO US.****

"_GO TO HELL!"_

"Shepard…"

"_Stay on the door_, I got it," Shepard ordered the justicar, ducking down as she dropped her rifle and hauled out her sniper. "I got a _present_ for that fucker…"

Returning to the window she set her crosshairs on the edge of the drone's cover. "Just show me your face, you bastard," she hissed. "Grunt, see if you can't prod him out."

"Got it," the krogan replied, and laid down heavy fire on the other side of the cover, his bullets chewing through concrete and stone.

****YOU CANNOT SILENCE ME, SHEPARD. I AM THE HARBINGER OF YOUR DESTRUCTION****

Her sites wavered as the voice burnt its way through her head once more. She could swear she felt her actual skull expand slightly under the force and bit her own wounded lip hard enough to make it bleed again. Something wet slipped down her cheeks, which only made her angrier. Shepard didn't cry easily, and she sure as hell never cried simply because of _pain_.

She didn't realize the 'tears' were not of saline. Her nose had started to bleed again, and beads of crimson were welling in her eyes to spill down her face.

Grunt's gunfire paused as he changed his heat-sink, and as it did, the drone glanced around his cover…foolishly, right into Shepard's sites. She snapped her finger down on the trigger and the thing jolted as half its head sheered away. It collapsed, writhing as it began to dissolve, acid eating its way through its torso and consuming it.

Gasping in relief, Shepard turned and slumped below the window, dropping her sniper and picking up her rifle again. "EDI?"

_{Seven minutes.}_

Time in battle was a funny thing, passing in an instant or stretching to an eternity. Shepard was more or less used to it but even so, it was almost impossible to believe that only three minutes had gone past. It felt like a motherfucking _week_. She heard the drone of more landing soldiers and shook her head.

"This isn't over yet. Let's keep on 'em."

Wiping a hand over her face she started to turn back to the window, only to curse and duck as something sliced through the wall of the pre-fab, cutting through the metal and plastic before crossing toward the door.

Whirling around to the window Shepard spotted a soldier holding some kind of direct energy weapon, a particle beam, which was slicing the front of the pre-fab like butter. Samara lowered down to her knees as it cut through the door over her head, still holding her barrier in place. Shepard focused her fire on that soldier as Grunt began to wipe out those charging toward them.

The entire pre-fab shook as the beam slashed back toward the window. Shepard snatched her arm out of the way of its path just in time, the weapon overloading her shields in an instant, cutting through the shoulder pad of her hard-suit and just nicking her flesh, all in the same micro-second it took her reflexes to shift out of the way. Had she been any slower, she'd have lost an arm, or been cut completely in half.

"Grunt, watch out!" Shepard barked as the beam headed toward him, the young krogan ducking away just as it chipped over the top of one of his plates.

Shepard opened fire again, bullets clawing through the wielder's knee and hip, carapace cracking. It stumbled, the beam dying as its hand fell off the trigger in an attempt to steady itself. Instantly both she and Grunt doused it in fire, and the beast dropped.

Black scorches lined the front of the pre-fab where the weapon had cut through. Dropping the remaining soldiers, Shepard's eyes shifted toward the Collector ship as she caught movement.

"Something incoming," she reported, once again drawing her sniper to scope it. "Looks…like a shuttle, maybe?"

Lifting the scope to her eye, her broken nose merely another dull ache in a symphony of dull aches still wracking her skull, and focused on it.

Her first impression was that it was just another bug…a great big less-humanoid looking bug. It was flying slowly but had no wings she could see. It resembled some kind of black beetle or crab, and she could see the same blue shimmer of cybernetics along its length that the husks bore.

Then, for a moment, the front maw of its armor hinged open and Shepard's blood ran cold.

"Fuck. _Me_."

"What is it?" Samara asked.

"We got a huge fucking _tank_ heading our way, and it's goddamn filled with husks. No…no, it _is_ husks…fused together like that ugly fucker we put down earlier, and sealed in some weird armor."

As soon as it was in range Shepard pegged it a couple of times with her sniper, seeing the unmistakable strong blue flash of shields. "This isn't gonna cut it," she said, lowering her sniper. "I don't know that we have any weapon that's even going to scuff that monster."

"Here it comes!" Grunt warned. He and Shepard both ducked back under cover as the flying tank lowered out of the sky, unfolding enormous knife-like legs and dropping to the ground.

There was an enormous flash of blue energy, a wave that tore apart the ground, puffing husk remains to ash and dust. It slammed into the front of the pre-fab. Already weakened by the gashes carved by the particle beam, the front of the building ruptured inward, peeling like a tin-can.

Shepard once again found herself in the air, slamming hard down to her belly and skidding to a halt just inches from the targeting computer bank. Grunt landed with a hard woof nearby as well, shaking his head as he began to push himself up.

Shepard rolled into a sit, hauling her rifle around as looked out the ruined front of the pre-fab. All she saw was the looming tank, its armor gaping open again like some kind of disjointed mouth. Dozens of grotesquely human husk-faces glared out at her, eyes lit with eldritch fire.

She fired at them but the maw snapped shut again, her bullets only sparking weakly off of its shielding. Samara had recovered herself, and there was a forceful burst of biotics as she managed to drive the thing back a few feet, resealing the ruined opening of the pre-fab with her shielding.

Staggering to her feet, Shepard tossed her rifle. "Keep it away from the targeting computer _at all costs_," she ordered.

"Where are you going?" Samara asked, hands wreathed with cold fire.

"_To get a better gun_!"

Feeling every hair on her body lift slightly as she passed through Samara's barrier, Shepard darted out of the gaping rent in the front of the pre-fab and ran across the charred and ruined field. The tank half-turned toward her and swiped a leg as big as a tree and as sharp as a scythe down toward her, close enough she could feel the wind of it as she ducked her head. She heard Grunt open fire again but didn't dare look back. The thing's main priority would be to take out the targeting system computer, and it was unlikely to follow a single fleeing foot-soldier.

Weaving around the thicker puddles on the ground, trying not to slip or get bogged down, Shepard worked her way as fast as she was able toward her goal at the far end of the field.

The ground rumbled again, nearly flinging her from her feet, and she risked a look back. The tank was still concentrating on the pre-fab and had apparently sent another one of those blasts. The entire front of the building was gone now but she could still see the bark of Grunt's gun, the shimmer of Samara's barrier. They were holding.

Charging on her path she finally skidded to a halt beside one puddle in particular, relieved to see its weapon had been dropped far enough away to be unharmed by the dissolving acid. Hauling it up to her hip, she gave it a quick once over to familiarize herself with it, then aimed.

"Let's see how you like this, you _fucker_," she grinned, and depressed the trigger.

The particle beam lanced out and hissed against the tank's shielding. It flared brightly as she kept up the stream, striding forward with a firm set to her jaw. A sudden flash and the barriers gave way, the yellow beam searing into its armor.

_That_ got its attention. The thing turned and started her direction…_fast_.

"That's it, _this_ way," Shepard grinned, baring bloody teeth as she continued to fire, never letting up on the beam as she raked it over the monstrosity. One of its legs parted under its force and fell to the ground. A breath later she saw a bright blue light start to rise from deep inside the creature's armor, as if all the eyes of all the husks inside it were flaring at once.

It was a dozen yards away when it suddenly slammed into the ground, a riot of blue fire sailing in Shepard's direction. She dropped flat, the concussive blast still strong enough to pick her up and tumble her in a roll over the landscape. Her shoulder crashed into a boulder which changed the trajectory of her skid for a moment before she halted. Coughing, she staggered up again, reorienting on the tank and hitting it again.

Chunks of armor were parting now, falling away under the beam. Another leg fell and the monster seemed to flag, become disoriented. When the front of its armor dropped open again she immediately concentrated fire there, lancing into the conglomerated husks.

The tank wobbled in its hover and somewhere deep within it there was another bright flash of light, just as it crashed to the ground. The light seemed to swell and all Shepard had time to think was _not another goddamn explosion! _before she was thrust off her feet again.

This time she didn't lose consciousness, at least. She lay there on the ground just a few yards away from the destroyed tank, spread-eagle on her back with the particle weapon cast haphazardly at her side, staring up at the sky as she slowly caught her breath.

The bright blue was deepening slowly toward navy, swaths of gold, red and pink lighting near the horizon. Sunset was just an hour away. Soon, stars would be shining.

The blue was rent by dim and distant thunder, and she half turned her head toward the Collector ship. Flowers of destruction bloomed along its length, and Shepard smiled.

The anti-craft guns were firing.

Closing her eyes a moment, she relished just being able to lay there for a moment, before she heard footsteps. Opening her eyes again, she shaded them as she looked up at Samara and Grunt.

"Shepard, are you all right?" the asari asked. Shepard smirked, lifting her hand up toward them. Grunt grabbed it and helped haul her to her feet. The krogan was a bit scorched, but looked happy.

"That was a _really_ good fight," he lauded.

"We're not dead. I'm inclined to agree," Shepard replied, slapping him companionably on his arm before the ground seemed to rumble.

Turning, the three stared at the Collector ship as it began to lift. The anti-craft guns were hitting it hard but had, apparently, not been able to fully disable it. In moments the leviathan had cleared the colony and was picking up speed, rocketing into the late afternoon sky.

Shepard felt her gut sink and go cold. They had won, but how many colonists had been moved aboard? How many had they failed to save? Helpless civvies, men, women…_children_, like Esmé, lost.

_Ash could be one of them_, she realized. Suddenly the ache in her face and head seemed much more miserable, her exhaustion weighing her down.

It was a victory, she knew but…all it felt like was another loss.

* * *

><p>Shepard sat on the edge of the ruined front of the pre-fab, watching as Grunt poked at the liquefied remains of the dead 'Harbinger' drone. Samara handed her some medi-gel wipes and Shepard carefully mopped at the blood and dirt on her face, gingerly prodding her split lip and swollen nose.<p>

Chakwas would be able to fix the nose and the cuts, no problem, but the bruises would have to heal themselves. Shepard was going to have two spectacular black eyes for a time at the very least, and the rest of her face would resemble a sunset.

Dabbing at her lip, she jerked her chin toward Grunt. "That drone was just a regular soldier, until that voice started speaking again," she said.

"I saw it," Samara nodded. "It seemed to…expand, grow larger. Grow _smarter_."

"Called itself 'Harbinger'. I wonder why only I could hear it and not you two? The acid thing is familiar, as well. Saren dissolved in exactly the same way…yet more proof the Collectors are linked to the Reapers."

Shepard shook her head, dabbing at her lip again. "We lost a lot of civvies-"

"Hey! _Hey_! What are you _doing_? You let them _go_?"

The shouting voice accompanied the sound of running feet. The trio turned to see the mechanic who had been hiding in the work-shop running toward them, a few others on his heels. It seemed the strange paralytic affect of the swarms was wearing off.

"Let them _go_?" Shepard scowled as she got to her feet. "You think I just _let them go_?"

"You didn't _stop_ them!" the mechanic accused. "What kind of soldier _are_ you? They took half the colony!"

Shepard's look was black as she started forward, fist balling as she got toe to toe with the civvie, his eyes going wide. "You wanna _see_ just what kind of soldier I am?" she snarled. "Open your mouth _one more_ goddamn time-"

Someone grabbed hold of her, forcing her back a pace. "Delan's an ass, Skipper. Ignore him."

She had thought the restraining hand was Grunt, at first…but that was ridiculous. Grunt wouldn't have stopped a fight, he would have jumped right in with her, the moment the first fist flew. And Samara was standing several feet away.

The voice, however…the voice was _impossible_ to mistake. Turning her head, Shepard stared in relieved surprise at her former Gunnery Chief. Ashley Williams smiled, releasing her arm and offering her hand.

"Good to see you too, Skipper," she smiled. Shepard snatched hold of her hand, squeezing it tight even as she hauled the other woman in and hugged her.

"Jesus _fuck_, am I glad you're not on that ship."

Ashley slapped her on the back before releasing her. "You look like _shit_, Shepard," she said. "And I see your language hasn't gotten any less colorful…or your methods."

She looked around at the scattered puddles, husk remains, and the crater than had been the tank, approval in her eyes.

"Shepard? Like…_Commander_ Shepard? Ain't you some big Alliance hero?" The mechanic, Delan, asked. Shepard glared at him as Ashley narrowed her eyes.

"Yeah, she _is_…so show some respect, Delan…and learn when to keep your mouth shut."

"It's _her_ fault half the colony is gone!"

"She's the reason half the colony is still _here_," Grunt defended with a growl. "Keep yapping, puppy. I haven't spilled nearly enough blood yet today."

"Grunt," Shepard warned. "He's not worth your bullet."

Samara stepped forward, intervening as she urged the mechanic and the rest of the confused civilians back, talking to them in low, soothing tones. As she did, Ashley looked at her again.

"Skipper…I _am_ glad to see you," she said hesitantly. "But please, tell me this isn't what it looks like…"

"What?" Shepard asked, turning toward her. "What does it look like?"

"Shepard, you were _dead_…at least, I _thought _you were," Ashley replied, folding her arms. "We were your crew, your _friends_…do you know how much pain that put us through, thinking you were gone? Christ, Shepard…_I _had to break the news to Liara. You ever looked into a person's face, knowing you have to tell them someone they love is dead?"

"Ash, I-"

"Then the rumors start. You're not dead, you're under-cover somewhere. You're hiding from the media, you're off starting your own merc band or working with terrorists…pure bullshit. I _knew_ there was no way you'd destroy your own ship, put your _entire_ crew at risk, just to fake your death and fall off the grid. But the rumors kept on, and then I hear it from Anderson? Hear that you're actually _alive_? And here you _are_, Shepard. So what the fuck is going on?"

"Ash, I _was_ dead," Shepard replied firmly. "I spent the last two years dead or unconscious, and-"

The hum of an engine interrupted, and the two women turned to see one of the _Normandy_'s shuttles lowering to a landing. Grunt headed that direction as it settled to the ground, opening to disgorge Miranda, Mordin, Garrus, Jacob, and Chakwas with her medical team.

Seeing the insignia both plastered to the side of the shuttle and on Miranda's uniform, Ashley's eyes went wide, and she rounded on Shepard.

"It's _true_! You _are_ working for Cerberus!"

Shepard's look went black. "I am _not_ working for Cerberus, Ashley! Don't you-"

"_Not_ working for them? Then what the fuck is _that_? That's _Cerberus_, Shepard! I can't believe you sold out!"

"Are you fucking _kidding m_e? Sold out? If you'd just shut the fuck up for _half a second_ and let me explain-"

"Explain _what_? You are _not _the person I thought you were, Commander. I looked up to you, you were my _friend_, damn it, and now you're just a terrorist-"

Shepard had a hell of a right hook, but Ashley was a marine as well, and no shrinking violet. The blow only stumbled her a little, and a breath later it was a full on brawl.

There were shouts, and then Garrus and Miranda were hauling Shepard backward, Jacob and one of the larger colonists restraining Ash. Miranda had her hand plastered to Shepard's shoulder as she urged, "Just let it go, Commander."

Hardly hearing her, Shepard pointed over Miranda's shoulder at her former chief, still raging. "You don't know _what the fuck_ you're talking about, Ashley!"

"I know you're working with _terrorists_!" Ashley spat back, and tried to surge forward again only to be hauled back once more. "_Garrus_! You too? How _could_ you!"

"Ashley, just relax and listen-" Garrus tried, then had to grab tighter hold on Shepard again as the woman tried to push past and get at the chief one more time. "Shepard, _knock it off_!"

"You fucking _know me_!" Shepard shouted furiously at the other woman, ignoring the turian. "You're my _friend,_ goddamnit!"

"I'm _Alliance_, Shepard," Ashley spat back venomously. "And _I_, at least, know where _my_ loyalties lay! Get the fuck out of here, Shepard! Just go! And take your murdering _friends_ with you!"

"Come on, come on, let's go," Miranda urged Shepard back once more. The commander turned, shoving the woman's arm off of her and tossing Garrus's grip free as well, pressing the back of her hand against her busted lip as she strode away toward the shuttle.

Miranda looked warily back at the gunnery chief before silently following after Del. Ashley scowled at her, pushing Jacob back as he loosened his grip.

"You keep your hands off me, _Cerberus_," she snarled at him. He held his palms up in surrender and turned to trot after his commander and XO.

"Ashley, you really don't know what the hell you're talking about," Garrus told her sternly. "Shepard was _dead_. She lost everything, and now she's putting everything on the line to try and stop the Collectors and get your people back. _Her_ people. _Nan_, for fuck's sake. She deserves more from her friends than this."

Ashley's scowl didn't really lesson as she tested her bruised jaw with her fingertips. "This is _wrong_, Garrus. I hope to God you come to see that before it's too late."

"No, this is _right_," Garrus replied sadly. "Shepard was willing to face a firing squad to do the right thing, Ash, once upon a time, and she will _keep_ doing the right thing no matter what it costs her. Her career, her honor, her life…her _friends_. She saved half this colony, and she _will_ bring your people back. Even _if_ you hate her for it."

"I would have followed her _anywhere_," she spat.

"_Would_ have?" Garrus asked. "She's still leading, but you're no longer following, so…seems to me _she's_ not the one that's changed."

She glared at him, but said nothing as the turian turned and headed away.

* * *

><p>Eír couldn't stop her hands from wringing as she paced back and forth in the tiny living space of their rented apartment. Shrive emerged from the back room, walking over and gently halting her, taking her hands. "I know you're nervous, but you're going to be a wreck if you keep up like this."<p>

"I…I know. I am trying, I just…if she brought Shepard-"

"I told you. I'll go in first. If I see Shepard then we'll take it from there, ok? But remember, they worked together a long _time_ ago, Eír. I doubt she's dragging her old commander around with her still."

Eír nodded, leaning her forehead on the other asari's shoulder for a moment as she hugged her close. Shrive kissed her temple lightly, lingering in the moment before she withdrew. "Come on. We don't want to be late."

The pair walked hand in hand out into the plaza, heading toward the restaurant where they would be meeting T'Soni. As they neared the entrance Shrive parted from Eír, entering to look around. Eír tried not to pace, clasping her hands tightly, trying not to show her nervousness. A moment later, Shrive re-emerged.

"Liara is there," she said. "She has a human woman with her."

"Shepard?" Eír asked shakily.

"No. Shepard has black hair and dark eyes, from your description. This woman has yellow-colored hair, and lighter eyes. It is not Shepard."

Eír let out a breath of relief she hadn't even been aware she was holding. Shrive took her hand again, giving her knuckles a light kiss.

"You ready?"

Eír bobbed her head and took a deep breath. "Ready."

* * *

><p>Liara and Sydney stood at a tall bar-table near the far wall. It was all the asari could do to keep from pacing. She was nervous about the whole situation, and not <em>just<em> because she would be meeting her sister for the first time.

Shepard did not know she had left Hagalaz for this. Not that Liara was purposefully keeping her in the dark…ok, maybe not _entirely_ purposefully. Shepard had work, a mission she had to concentrate on. Liara didn't want to distract her from that. Even so, she knew Shepard would be upset to know that Liara had gone off without her knowledge.

_You do not need her permission._

_No, I do not, but I know she is concerned for my safety and this…this feels like lying._

_You will tell her the truth, simply…after the fact._

"Relax, Li," Syd told her, scooting the small glass of wine over closer to the asari. "C'mon, drink it. It'll help you to settle yourself."

"I am fine, I am just…"

"Jumpy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs," Sydney replied. "_Drink_."

Liara obediently plucked up the wine, sipping half of it without even tasting it, her eyes darting back and forth toward the door.

When a pair of asari stepped in, she nearly dropped her glass. "Th-there they are."

"She looks just as scared as _you_ do," Syd teased, straightening a little.

As the two newcomers headed over, Liara couldn't help but stare at Eír, unconsciously evaluating.

_She does not look like Benezia_, she thought. _She is a little darker, her eyes too purple. The shape of her nose and chin are different, but I can see a trace bit of a resemblance…in truth, she looks more like __**me**__ than like Mother._

The other asari had to be Shrive. She was lovely, a little taller than Eír and lighter in coloration. She carried herself with far more confidence, as well, and Liara didn't have to see the carved metal bracelet on her left wrist to know that she was a huntress. She had that grace about her, that soft stealth that even commandos lacked.

As the pair neared, Liara steeled her courage and smiled, offering her hand. "You must be Eír, and this, Shrive," she greeted. "I am Liara."

The younger asari nodded slightly, reaching out and taking the hand, staring at Liara's face. "I-It's good to meet you. I…have so many questions…"

"So do I," Liara admitted.

"Is this your bond-mate?" Shrive asked, gesturing casually toward Sydney, who smirked.

"Oh! No, this is…forgive me. This is Sydney Rasler. She is my friend and…bodyguard, I suppose you could say."

"Nice to meet you two," Sydney greeted with a nod, nursing her beer.

"Why…why don't we move to a booth," Liara suggested. "It will be easier to talk."

"I have a better idea," Shrive offered, looking at Eír. "Why don't _you two_ move to the booth right over there, and Ms. Rasler and I will stay here? We can still see you but you'll have a chance to speak without us butting in."

"_Sydney_. And I think that's a capital plan," Sydney agreed, giving Liara a reassuring nod. "Go on. I want to have a serious drink anyway and Shrive looks like a gal who can hold her booze."

"A-are you sure?" Liara asked.

"Go on, get out of here," Sydney grinned, shooing her off. "Go talk."

As Eír and Liara moved over to the booth, Shrive smiled at Sydney. "I see yours is just as nervous as mine."

"Looks like. They _are _sisters after all so…that's one thing they have in common."

* * *

><p>As they sat down at the nearby booth, within eyesight but out of earshot of the pair standing at the far table, Liara smiled slightly. "So. <em>That<em> is Matriarch Misira's daughter," she said gently. "She is very lovely, Eír. I can see you care for her a great deal."

Eír smiled slightly, coloring a little before she met Liara's eyes tentatively. "It…doesn't bother you? I mean, that we're both asari?"

"Should it?" Liara asked. "I am a pureblood myself, Eír. I believe it is the character and strength of a person that matters, not their parents or circumstances of their birth. Unfortunately, a lot of our people don't see it that same way."

Eír nodded nervously, looking down at the table. "And…what do you know? About the circumstances of my birth, I mean?" she asked, her voice soft and hesitant.

"I know enough," Liara said kindly. "I know what Gellian did, how you and your brother Thug came to be."

"Mother was not evil," Eír urged. "She was just…she was just sick, and-"

"Eír, it is all right," Liara soothed. "As I said, it does not matter. What matters is who you are and the choices you make. You are as important and as real as anyone else in this galaxy, and if Benezia had been given the opportunity to know you, she would have loved you very much."

"I…Mother did not speak of her much. It gave her pain, I think," Eír admitted. "Can you…can you tell me about her?"

Liara waved over the waitress, ordering them a pair of drinks before she smiled at the younger girl. "I would be happy to."

* * *

><p>Shrive and Sydney nursed their own drinks, watching the two talk. They could not hear what was said but as the conversation continued it was clear both women were relaxing, enjoying a rapport, forgetting about their nervousness.<p>

"So," Shrive looked away from her love to the human woman across from her. "You are Liara's…bodyguard?"

"In a manner of speaking," Sydney said.

"What is it that she does, that she would require protection?" the huntress wanted to know.

"Well, it's a long story and I can't really get into it, you understand," Sydney hedged. "Don't worry, it's not really anything that should land fire on you or Eír. Speaking of which, Eír said you might have a position on…Aratoht, was it? That's a batarian colony, if I remember right."

"Yes, I have a friend who works there. He was able to arrange employment for me to help train the colony's security forces."

"Oh, really? You a commando?"

"No, I am a huntress," Shrive told her. "We are less, _blunt_, than commandos. And my father is krogan, so that lends its own experience."

Sydney grinned. "Yeah, I'll bet you know a dozen different shapes to twist a spine into. Sounds interesting, at least. I wish you luck."

"Thank you," Shrive answered, and glanced back over at Eír and Liara. "They seem to be getting along well. Eír was so frightened that Liara would dislike her. I'm glad that is not the case."

"Liara's got a good heart," Sydney replied. "I don't think there's much of anyone she dislikes. No one that doesn't really deserve it, anyway."

* * *

><p>"I am sorry I did not get a chance to know her," Eír murmured, taking a sip of her drink.<p>

"She was a good woman, and she had a good heart," Liara agreed. "But you are her legacy, as much as I am. We are a part of her, and our daughters and our daughters' daughters will be a part of her also. In this, she will never truly die."

At the mention of daughters, Eír glanced out of the corner of her eye toward where Shrive was speaking with Sydney. Liara smiled knowingly at the look.

"You are fortunate to have her. I hope all goes well for you," she said. Eír colored a little but could not hide a small smile, before she cleared her throat, lifting her chin.

"And what of you, Liara?" she asked. "Do you have a bond-mate?"

Liara felt her own cheeks heat a little as she smiled bashfully. "Well, we are not bond-mates…not yet," she admitted. "We are taking things as they come for now but…I would be lying if I were to say I did not pray to the Goddess every day, to have that future with her. To have daughters…be a family. Her…her work is very important however and right now…very dangerous."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Eír said with genuine sympathy. "Is she asari as well?"

"No, she is human," Liara smiled. "Her name is Del Shepard."


	36. Chapter 36

A/N: Sorry for those who have read prior to this, I forgot to put up my warning.

This chapter contains to allusions to things that some people might find extremely uncomfortable, most specifically the rape of a minor and cannibalism. I do not go into details, just wanted to give you a heads up.

* * *

><p>"It's the nanites, the implants…"<p>

Miranda sounded as matter-of-fact as she always did, but Shepard knew the woman well enough by now to hear the subtle variances below her confident tone. She was concerned, feeling guilt over this. As she was the one that had used the nanite and cybernetic technology to help bring Shepard back, this new dilemma was…therefore…her fault. At least, in _her_ mind.

Shepard was standing in the open door of the infirmary, one arm uplifted, braced against the doorframe as she leaned on it. From where Miranda and Chakwas stood behind her, neither could see the woman's expression…which didn't help matters.

In her silence, Miranda continued. "I think this Harbinger might be the Collector's AI, perhaps…or maybe a Queen of the hive mind. The soldiers must have similar tech implants and it uses that to take control of them directly."

"So it could take control of _me_?" Shepard asked quietly.

"No, I think that's very unlikely," Miranda replied instantly. "If it had that capability it would have done so, instead of simply asking you to surrender. However your implants do pick up the communication signal which causes the bioelectrical impulses to over-excite-"

"Which causes pain, increased pressure, and the small capillaries in your sinus cavity to burst," Chakwas stepped in.

"So whenever this fucker appears and talks to me, my head feels like it's going to explode. That's _great _to have in battle," Shepard grunted, half-glancing back at the two women. Despite Chakwas's medical intervention, the bruising on her face was still stark. Most notably, the two semi-circles of black and purple beneath her eyes.

"Prolonged exposure at this point would probably render you unconscious," Miranda admitted. "However, now that we know what's causing it, Mordin and I can find a solution. We may not be able to prevent you from hearing this Harbinger's 'voice', but I'm confident we can find some way to keep it from causing you pain or incapacitating you."

Shepard nodded slowly. "I trust you will," she said simply.

_{Commander, we are free and clear of the planet,}_ Joker reported. _{I have an incoming communication for you from the Illusive Man.}_

Straightening, Shepard strode out of the infirmary without another word.

* * *

><p>However many millions or even trillions of miles might separate them, Shepard's dark energy could be felt the moment her holographic image appeared. The Illusive Man seemed nonplussed, as intent as ever on pretending they had anything even remotely approaching a polite, professional relationship.<p>

"Shepard, good work on-"

"Which part?" Shepard interrupted hotly. "The part where I lost half the colony? The part where the Collectors escaped? Or the part where they nearly split my head like a fucking melon? Oh, I know…you must mean the part where I got into a fist-fight with one of my best friends."

"I read Miranda's reports," he replied. "Yes, you ran into challenges, but as always, you overcame them-"

"_Overcame_ them? Stop giving me a goddamn pep-talk, you _ass_! Stop pissing in my ear and telling me it's fucking raining, all right? I'm not a motherfucking _idiot_!"

"Shepard, calm down-"

"Tell me Horizon _wasn't_ a set-up," Shepard replied furiously. "Ash heard rumors I was not only alive but working with Cerberus. Anderson heard the same rumors. I know your fucking security isn't _that_ goddamn lax. Tell me you didn't put me, my crew, those colonists, and _my friend_ at risk for your own agenda!"

"Shepard, I am here for the same reason you are. To make sure these abductions stop, to make sure the Reapers don't succeed in their plans. I may have let it slip that you were alive, and working for us. I may have also let it slip that Horizon might be the next colony to be attacked, to help…persuade the Alliance to send Ashley Williams there. We know that the Collectors are looking for you or for people associated to you. I also knew it was only a matter of time before the Collectors hit more colonies. I would much rather they hit colonies where we can expect them and potentially stop them."

"So you used Ash as _bait_," Shepard spat. "What about Nan? Was Nan bait too?"

"Shepard, you need to see the big picture. This is for humanity, for the greater good. You know as well as I do sacrifices have to be made, risks have to be taken-"

"As far as I can tell, my friends and I are the _only_ ones taking the risks and making the sacrifices," Shepard replied. "Why don't you leave that shiny little safe palace of yours and come visit my ship for a couple of weeks? Let me slap a rifle in _your_ hand and see just how willing you are _then_ to start taking those risks, you fucking cowardly _pi yanr. Chui se_!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Shepard, but it doesn't change facts. Now we know fully what we're up against, and we were able to save half a colony…which is more than we have accomplished yet. As for your friend…I was wrong about your interactions with T'Soni but you still _must_ remain devoted to this mission. I am sorry about Chief Williams but truth be told whether or not she sees and understands the truth is a moot point. It does not change the mission or what is at stake. Best you put it behind you."

"I'll decide what's best for me, fuck you very much," Shepard glared. "You're _not_ my father, my friend, or even someone I _respect_…you're a resource, and that's fucking _it_. So don't call me back unless you have something that I can _use_."

As Shepard turned and vanished, the Illusive Man reached out to his console and shut off the interface. His expression was stone as he called up another image, contemplating the graphic feed of a form sitting on a bed for a long moment.

_I had hoped it wouldn't come to it but, if Shepard continues to prove difficult, __**you **__may be the only way._

* * *

><p><em>Recipient unavailable. Please leave message<em>.

Shepard grimaced tiredly at the message on her console, rubbing idly at her bruised nose before she reached out and hit the audio-feed to record her voice.

"Hey, Tianlán, it's me. Apparently you're busy…off doing important Broker stuff, no doubt. I hope I didn't step over the line with Rasler and her boys. I just…well. I just need to know you're all right."

She closed her eyes a moment, scrubbing her fingers over her lips before she continued. "Collectors hit another colony today…which you probably _already_ know…yeah. Horizon. Managed to save just under half of the population. I guess that should make me happy but…I just keep thinking of the other half taken away in that ship. And it turns out that Ash was there. She didn't get taken but…well, let's just say, our reunion wasn't exactly roses. She thinks I'm a traitor, Li…putting my back on the Alliance, on everything I stood for and…well, you know… _Cerberus_. Part of me can't help but think she's right."

She shook her head in irritation a moment, then straightened. "Anyway, I just wanted to talk. Call back whenever you can. I just need to hear your voice. I ummm…_yeah_. Bye."

She closed the message and sent it off. Snatching up a cigar and her lighter, she then picked up her flask, filling it from her whiskey reserves before spinning the top back on tightly. Tucking it in her pocket she left the Nest and took the lift down to Engineering.

_I still know where my loyalties lie_.

Coming from almost anyone else, Shepard wouldn't give a shit. Coming from Ashley, however, it was a knife that dug in deep. Shepard didn't have many of what she'd call 'close friends'. Kasumi was quickly becoming one but Tali, Ash, Li…they were different, and always would be. The knife was only made sharper by the fact that Ash was a marine. They came from the same cloth, stood for the same things. Ash, of all people, _should_ have understood.

_Or maybe it's just that she understands __**too**__ well._

Stepping off the lift in Engineering she headed down to the maintenance area, the lowest accessible point on the ship one could get to without crawling into ductwork.

Truth be told, she was almost tempted to do just that- hole up in some vent somewhere. Instead she made herself stop instead on the stairs before she lit up her cigar, tried to center.

"_You_ again?" Jack's voice was inevitable, and came only moments later as she was alerted by the snap of the lighter.

Shepard glanced up at her, pulled her flask from her pocket and tossed it at the tattooed woman.

"Thought you could use a drink," she mumbled. Jack caught the flask, spinning the cap off before taking a dose and leaning up on the wall.

"Why do you _always_ come down here?" she asked, eyes narrow.

Shepard shrugged. "Quiet, dark. Same reasons you like it, I suppose."

"Not so quiet. _I'm_ down here," Jack retorted.

"Don't mind talking to you, Jack," Shepard replied honestly.

"Why?" Jack asked pointedly. "_Why_ don't you mind?"

"Got things in common, I guess."

"Yeah, right. We're _nothing_ alike."

"So you keep saying," Shepard retorted tiredly.

"And _you_ keep insisting otherwise," Jack snorted. Moving over to the stairs she passed Shepard back the flask, then sat down beside her. Shepard took a nip, looking thoughtfully in the distance.

"Osco's dead," she murmured after a moment.

"Yeah, I heard," Jack snorted. "Fucking bitch. Fucking _figures_."

"You remember much about her?" Shepard asked.

"I remember her face," she said tersely. "I remember being in that room they locked me in, yelling and screaming to be let out. When they did let me out, though, it was either to fight or go to the lab. Didn't like the lab. Fighting was good. Whenever I saw the chain I knew they were taking me to the labs."

"The chain?"

"Yeah, they had this twisted, fucked up chain thing, right? They'd come in, and this crazy fast fucker named Aethis would whip that chain around me…arm, leg, waist, neck sometimes, didn't matter. No matter how fast I was it was never fast enough. As soon as he got the chain on me I was done. I couldn't use my biotics. If I did, the chain would charge up and then they'd shock me with it. Pain like you wouldn't believe."

Shepard stared at her. She'd never heard of anything like this 'chain' before. Some kind of device to halt biotics? A battery to store them? She'd have to ask Liara if she'd heard of such a thing.

Jack shrugged, taking back the flask as Shepard offered it and taking another swallow. "Then they'd take me to the lab, and _she'd _be there. Needles, examinations, she acted like I was a piece of meat most of the time but sometimes…she'd give me things. Little things, like little candies or lollipops. Twisted bitch, right? Doctors in the lab called me her girl, you know? Whenever she was there and they talked to her about me, it was 'your girl' this and 'your girl' that. For a while I thought she might actually be my mother."

"Could she be?"

"Nah. Shows in the records I was taken when I was little. Real mother was told I'd died or some bullshit. Doesn't matter, I'm just glad it's not her, you know?"

"How'd you get out of that place?" Shepard asked, still nursing her slowly dwindling cigar. Jack's smile had no mirth in it, only ice.

"Something happened. Some kind of emergency. I managed to get out of my cell. Wiped out everything in my way. Including Aethis. Now _that_ was sweet. He didn't have his chain ready, you see? Wasn't expecting me to be out. I turned him into a goddamn smear on the wall. No sign of Osco though. I wanted to piss on her corpse but she wasn't there. Guess one day I'm going to have to go to Tuchanka, find out where they parked her, and piss on her grave _instead_."

Shepard nodded, getting to her feet and leaning against the wall momentarily, dropping the spent butt of her smoke on the floor grate and scuffing it out with her boot.

"Why are you asking me this, anyway? Why do you even fucking care?" Jack asked.

Shepard shrugged, shoulders against the wall as she folded her arms. "Why should I _not_ care?"

Jack suddenly surged up, lighting with blue. Before Shepard could even reach for the pistol on her hip her arms were pulled out at her sides and she was pinned to the wall with biotics. Completely immobilized from the neck down, all Shepard could do was curse herself.

_Damn fucking fool! Look what you got yourself into!_

"What the fuck is it _with_ you?" Jack demanded, now standing toe to toe with the frozen commander, hands still frosted with energy. "I had you _pegged_, Shepard. Alliance brat who thinks she's fucking tough, someone who would go crying to Mama the second any real shit hit the fan. I insult you to your goddamn face and you don't defend yourself. You keep trying to be nice to me but I _know_ how the galaxy works. I'm not a naïve little colony prick. Everyone wants _something_. So what do _you_ want from me, Shepard? Why the fucking buddy-buddy act? "

"I don't want anything from you except your help with the Collectors," Shepard retorted. "I don't even want _that _if you're not willing to give it."

"_Bullshit,_" Jack fumed. "There's _got_ to be something! You can't just-" Then her eyes seemed to clarify, the scowl on her face relaxing with understanding.

"Oh. _I_ get it."

"What?" Shepard asked warily.

"Don't play baffled, Shepard," Jack actually seemed to be oddly relieved. "I _know_ what you're after. This is about _sex_."

"_What?"_ Shepard blurted.

"_Please_," Jack snorted. "What the fuck _else_ could you want? I heard about you and that…that asari, so I know what field you play. If that's what this is about, you could have just fucking _said _so."

"I don't-" Shepard began furiously, only to break off as Jack suddenly plastered her lips over the commander's. She was still trapped by biotics, unable to even turn her head away. It did not, however, last long. Having convinced herself she knew what Shepard was after, confident the commander would take what she wanted now that it had been officially offered, Jack let the biotics die. In a breath, Shepard was free.

A breath after _that_, Jack's rear-end slammed hard to the floor as the angry commander shoved her backward.

Del wiped a wrist over her lip, face stone. "Don't you _ever_ do that _again_," she threatened in a voice that promised nothing less than dismemberment.

Jack gaped at her a second, before her own expression tightened into anger again…and bafflement. Her hands slapped to the ground beside her before she surged up to her feet.

"What the _fuck_, Shepard?" she bellowed. "If not _that,_ then what the fuck _do_ you want? I don't know what to do…I don't know where I fucking _stand_ with you!"

"Jack, I _get_ that you've been hurt, that you've been used. I get your anger…_believe me_, I get your anger," Shepard replied. "But sometimes, some whiskey and a talk is just some goddamn _whiskey and a talk_. I just figured we had some things in common."

"Like _what_?" Jack asked in exasperation, then jabbed a finger toward Shepard's left wrist. "Meat-hooks, the sneak-thief tells me. You tore your own hand free of meat-hooks?"

"I did what I had to," Shepard replied.

"Where do _you_ get the balls for shit like that?"

"Why the fuck you think I'm a pansy-ass pussy is _beyond_ me. Is it because I don't kick around everything smaller than me? Or feel the need to have a pissing contest with you?"

"Something like that," Jack snorted.

"You think _you're_ the only one who grew up locked in a room, Jack?" Shepard glared. "I don't need to defend myself to _you, _or thrash you around in some immature display so that you think I'm worth some kind of twisted respect. I couldn't give two fucks what you think about me but I'm goddamn tired of this bullshit. You got handed a shit deal, and that fucking sucks. The pain you've gone through, the things that were done to you…shittiest fucking deal ever. _I get that_. I've been fucking _through_ it."

"Oh yeah? People _tortured_ you, did they? Did experiments on you?"

"So _your_ pain is the only kind of pain there is? The only kind that is real? I was born in a locked room to a couple of junkie parasites who couldn't care less that I even existed. I ate cigarette butts and drank out of a toilet to survive. I didn't see sunshine until I was six years old and had been trapped with their dead, rotting corpses for three days. Do you know what a starving kid who's little more than an animal does with dead bodies after three goddamn days? Desperation is a _unique_ flavor."

That made Jack blink, some of the terse skepticism fading from her face.

Shepard had never spoken of these things so directly, not even to Nan. Liara knew the true extent of them only through the mind-melds, but Shepard did not verbally articulate them even to _her_. She was growing visibly agitated as she spoke, but she didn't let herself stop.

"After that, I lived in vents for _another_ six years. Avoiding the Blue-Shirts, avoiding the gangs. I ate out of garbage cans and learned to read by spying through a grate over an old man's shoulder as he read his morning news before catching the train. And the gangs were bad. You didn't want to get caught on Savon street. I did once. Nine years old. Twenty year old fucker named Furlock and his two boys pulled me ankle-first out of a vent when I was too slow. They were eating pizza, you see, and I had tried for the box. They caught me. You know what they _do_ to vent-rats on Savon when they catch them? Six needles…neck, arms, both legs. Who knows what dirty shit was on them, or in them? _They_ thought it was a fucking game…laughed when the drugs made me fall down, when they made me sick. Then they played a _new _game. I bet you can guess what kind of game _that_ was."

She went back to the stairs and snatched hold of the discarded flask, but restrained herself from actually drinking it. Her fingers were tight enough on the metal, however, to nearly dent it. "We've both been through fire, Jack. Goddamn world of pain set upon us by others, helpless to stop it. Does it _matter _the names and the faces and the reasons behind the torture? It'd dead. It's gone. This is _now_."

Shepard looked over at the ex-con. "I don't want _anything_ from you, Jack, except to understand that sometimes _I_ need to hide in the dark too."

She flung the flask at Jack's chest, the other woman catching it.

"Keep it," Shepard said bitterly. "I got more upstairs."

* * *

><p>"<em>No, she is human," Liara smiled. "Her name is Del Shepard."<em>

Eír had never before experienced a moment where time actually seemed to stop, until now. She had known, of course, that Liara _knew_ Shepard…she was her old commander, after all. This, however…_this_ was beyond what she had expected, and her head was spinning in a thousand different directions. A storm of confusion, disbelief, and anger swirled up in her so suddenly all she could do was simply sit there.

The expression on her face must have been a sight to behold, however, as Liara's smile quickly faded into concern. "Eír, what is it? What is the matter?"

The younger girl's lower lip trembled before her eyes shut tightly. "Not mine," she murmured desperately against the surging storm. "Not mine…_this is not mine_!"

"Eír, what is not yours-… _Eír?"_

Liara's alarm grew as she saw the faint sheen of blue growing over the girl's skin, the unmistakable sparking of biotics.

A breath later, and Shrive was there, the huntress arriving so swiftly she seemed to have teleported directly across the room. Sydney was not far behind.

"Eír, sweetie…_let it go_."

"It is not mine," Eír said desperately. "This is not mine! I do not want to-!"

"I know, I know it is not yours," Shrive urged. "_Let it go_, she is not here. She _is not here_, Eír."

"What is going on?" Liara asked. Shrive glanced up at her.

"I need to get her out of here," she said quickly. "Come to the apartment, one hour. I will do my best to explain then."

Liara rose as Shrive pulled Eír up to her feet, Sydney almost immediately putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Let them go," she said. Shrive quickly ushered Eír out of the restaurant, arm slung about her shoulders, murmuring to her intently.

"What happened?" Sydney asked after they'd gone.

"I-I do not know," Liara replied. "We were speaking about Shrive, about bond-mates. She asked if Del was asari as well and I told her that she was human, and it…it was as if I had just murdered a child in front of her. The look on her face…"

"Maybe she really doesn't like humans?" Sydney asked, surprised.

"N-no, I do not think that is it. She started saying 'it is not mine' and then her biotics started to flare a little, out of her control…"

The worry on her face was plain to be seen. Sydney shook her head. "Shrive seemed a bit more calm about it. Maybe it's a known condition? She said she would explain, right? Let's give them that hour. Get your head centered again, and then we'll go find out what's what."

* * *

><p>By the time they got back to the apartment, Eír's biotics had calmed, but she had not. She was openly sobbing as they got in the door, Shrive doing her best to comfort her.<p>

"She will hate me now," Eír lamented miserably. "Why? Everything was going so well and…"

"And she said Shepard's name," Shrive deduced. Eír sobbed and shook her head.

"She said…she said that…that she and Shepard…we were talking about _bond-mates_…"

Shrive looked surprised and Eír shook her head again. "How could she…how could she _do_ that? With someone who killed her own mother…?"

"Shh, sweetling, shh," Shrive hugged her close. "We do not have the whole story, and you know that this anger is not yours. Let it go. I will explain it all to Liara-"

"No! Then she will surely hate me!" Eír worried. "Gellian made me to kill the one she loves!"

"Trust me, Eír," Shrive murmured, kissing her temple. "Liara is intelligent, right? She is smart enough to understand. She will know this is _not _your choice. We will find a way to conquer this, all three of us. Resist letting fear consume you as much as you resist Gellian's artificial anger. We will figure this out."

Slowly she soothed the girl until Eír had exhausted herself, then guided her into the bedroom to rest. Resting her forehead on the door a moment, she gave a silent prayer to the Goddess, before the door chime alerted her. The hour had passed already.

Answering the door, she ushered Liara and Sydney in to sit down. "She is resting," she explained, going over to the small drink service. "I am afraid we do not have much, but we will all be needing a drink, I think."

"Is she all right?" Liara asked, fiddling with the hem of her tunic, a nervous habit.

"She will be," Shrive reassured, returning with the drinks.

"Is it some kind of an illness? She was saying 'it is not mine'…"

Shrive sat down herself, taking a sip of her own drink before setting it aside and regarding Liara. "You know Eír's mother…Gellian. You know how Eír…came to be?"

"Yes," Liara replied. "It does not matter. I told her she is as much Benezia's daughter as I am, that it matters _who_ she is, not the circumstances of her birth."

"This is true," Shrive nodded. "But Gellian did not create Eír merely to have some small piece of Benezia left to her. Eír is…well, to be blunt, Eír is a weapon."

"A weapon?" Liara blinked, horrified. Sydney frowned.

"What _kind_ of a weapon? A weapon to do what?"

"A weapon of vengeance," Shrive said patiently. "Eír is incredibly strong, both physically and biotically…but biotically she is far stronger than any other asari I have ever encountered. Gellian made her this way, manipulated her genetically to produce the perfect tool of her vengeance. Eír was made to _kill_ Commander Del Shepard."

"Wh-_what_?" Liara felt like the breath had been knocked out of her. Her own newly-found sister, that sweet girl she had talked the afternoon with…was meant to _kill_ the one person in the galaxy that meant the most to her.

"Gellian loathed Shepard for what she did to Benezia," Shrive told her. "She was losing her mind, quite literally, and she created Eír to contain her hatred, rage, and vengeance. Gellian cared about nothing except murdering Shepard. Eír does not _want_ to hurt her, however. She never knew Benezia, has no reason to wish vengeance. This anger is not hers, and she knows that. Overcoming it, however, is a harder task."

"And when I admitted that I was involved with Del, she…oh, _Goddess_…" Liara closed her eyes sadly. "If she is as strong as you say she is-"

"She is, and _more_," Shrive told her. "I do not doubt that Shepard is a formidable warrior but trust me… Eír's biotics would rip her apart…on a _molecular_ level, given a little more discipline."

"No one's going to let that happen," Sydney said sternly.

"Of course they are not," Shrive replied. "As I said, Eír is trying. She does not want this anger, this hatred. It is not of her choosing, and she is afraid that knowing this will cause you to hate her."

"No, I do not hate her," Liara replied. "As you said, this is the doing of a sad, mentally-disturbed woman who was ill from the day she was born. I am only sorry it is Eír that must bear the burden of it. You understand, I must warn Shepard about this."

"What will Shepard do?" Shrive hedged nervously, regarding the two. The last thing she wanted was the human commander going after Eír in an attempt to rectify the threat.

"She will not harm Eír, that I can promise you," Liara said, instantly gauging the other woman's fears. "And she has resources. Between her contacts and mine perhaps we can find a way to help Eír further, make it easier for her to make her own choices, to follow the path she desires. Shepard has a good heart, I can assure you of that, and her determination cannot be broken once she sets her mind to something-"

"Like killing Benezia?" Eír asked tiredly from the bedroom doorway, drawing all three sets of eyes to her.

"You should be resting," Shrive said, and started to get to her feet, only to halt as Liara rose instead, giving her a gentle gesture before walking over to the other girl.

"Eír, I am sorry for the pain that Gellian went through when she lost Benezia, and I know that this anger you feel toward Shepard is not your own. But you must believe me. Shepard is not the monster that Gellian thought she was."

"How can you say that?" Eír asked miserably. "She killed your mother, right in front of you-"

"No, she did not," Liara said sadly. "Saren and the Reapers killed my mother. They poisoned her mind with indoctrination, robbed her of her will, controlled her into perpetrating horrible acts. She was not in control of herself, Eír. She was a prisoner in her own mind, and attacked us against her will. What Shepard was forced to shoot was no longer my mother. She would have killed Shepard, myself, and my friend. Shepard did not pull that trigger easily, and it is a guilt she still carries."

"You love her," Eír murmured.

"I do," Liara replied. "Very much. And I owe her more than I can ever repay."

"I do not want to hurt her," Eír sniffled. "I do not want to take her away from you. I just want to…to go somewhere, to live with Shrive and be happy. I do not want to hate, to kill _anyone_."

"I know," Liara said softly, embracing the younger girl. "Eír, you are my sister, and I will do everything in my power to help you find that happiness. I swear it to the Goddess."

* * *

><p>The door to the starboard side observation deck hissed open, Shepard taking a step through before halting. She had come up here after leaving Jack in Engineering, but had forgotten that the room had been assigned as the asari Justicar's quarters. The woman was standing at the window, peering out into the ebony black.<p>

"I'm sorry," Shepard murmured. "I did not mean to intrude."

She turned to go, only to be halted by Samara's sultry voice.

"There is a saying among my people, Shepard. 'One cannot bear the depths of the sea alone'."

Pausing, Shepard glanced back at her. After a moment, the asari turned her own head and regarded the human. "I would like to speak with you, if you have the time."

"Yeah, of course," Shepard replied, stepping down into the room and walking over. Samara's storm grey eyes measured her a moment.

"That is not a quality one often encounters," she noted.

"What quality?" Shepard asked. As always she felt slightly intimidated by the woman, a bit too aware of her age and beauty than was probably wise.

"You have much that troubles you, and I am little more than a stranger to you…yet at my simple request you have put aside all your own concerns and are willing to address mine."

"You're part of my crew now," Shepard replied. "That is what a commander does."

"That is a veil you hide behind, but as you will," Samara told her. "You comported yourself on Horizon as a true warrior, Shepard. Your kindness and compassion to that child spoke volumes of your honor, your spirit. I am…sorry, that your friend reacted the way that she did."

Shepard looked broodily out toward the stars. "Ash reacted exactly the same way I would have, if the situation was reversed. I mean, she was right, wasn't she? I turned my back on the Alliance, accepted the help of terrorists…for my own selfish reasons."

"And what reasons are those?" Samara asked.

"A woman was taken from one of the colonies," Shepard told her. "A woman that was as good as a mother to me. I knew that if I went back to the Alliance, chances were that I would never be able to find her, to get her back safely. How selfish is that? That I'm willing to work with an organization I loathe, to toss everything I should care about aside, just to save one woman…not the thousands of _other_ missing people, just that _one_ woman."

Samara said nothing, and after a moment Shepard shook her head. "She's probably dead by now," she said softly. "It will be weeks still, possibly months, before we can even hope to get through that relay and find the Collector home world and even then, there's no guarantee we'll find our missing people…and little chance they'll still be alive."

"Yet you cling to that chance."

"It's all I've got," Shepard replied. "I hold to it, because that hope is all I've got."

"You are a fascinating woman, Commander," Samara said without reservation. "And your friend is incorrect, as are you. Thousands of people is a hard number to fathom. You have put a face to them, the face of your friend that you wish to rescue…and this helps you to keep driving onward. But I do not believe that you would have turned your back on the others if your friend had not been taken as well. Your morals are uncompromised, Shepard."

"You're sure about that?"

"It is my job to know about morals," Samara pointed out. "Your friend does you an injustice in not trusting you…and you do an injustice to yourself in the same."

"Injustice…" Shepard hedged. "Please tell me that doesn't mean you have to kill us."

Samara smiled, ever so slightly. "Justicars do not slay over every miniscule case of injustice, Commander Shepard. If we did, there would not be a soul left breathing in this galaxy, including ourselves. After all, is it_ just_ to expect a person to give up their life and all they love to pursue a single, heartbreaking cause…even if that cause is justice itself?"

"I suppose not."

"I have my Code, Shepard…and you have yours. Yours may not be written in black and white but it is the truth, all the same. I am honored to be a part of this mission and under your command. You will find justice for your friend…and for the others who have been taken. I believe in the end, you will also find justice for yourself."


	37. Chapter 37

Shepard had just turned on some Flatwood and was in the midst of pouring herself a whiskey when her omni-tool suddenly chimed. Setting the bottle aside she activated it, and recognizing the contact, she activated the holographic display.

Liara appeared a few feet away, tiny motes of light coalescing into her image.

"Shepard, I received your message," she said. "I am sorry, I was...Shepard, what happened?"

She had noticed the bruises on Del's face, and stepped forward, lifting a hand toward the commander's cheek, forgetting a moment she could not actually touch her.

"It's nothing," Shepard reassured. "Just another day at the office. I'm glad you called, Tianlán."

"Your message was a little concerning," Liara admitted, studying Shepard's face. "I cannot believe Ash called you a traitor. More, I cannot believe you think she might be _correct_."

"Isn't that what I _am_?" Shepard asked, sitting on the bed with a huff, picking up her drink. "No matter what justifications I come up with, the facts still remain, Li. I am working with terrorists. Taking their blood money. And I got into a fist fight with Ash over it."

"She inflicted those bruises?" Liara asked, surprised. Ash was no lightweight, but she was also no Shepard.

"No, _that_ was just…battle." She didn't tell Liara that an explosion had sent her face first into a set of stairs. Liara worried enough about her risking her life without sharing all the gory details.

Liara moved over and, unable to sit on the actual furniture, of course, crouched in front of her. "Ashley is idealistic," she murmured. "And she is a good friend, but she is not seeing all ends in this. The Alliance could have branded you a traitor for stealing the _Normandy_ to pursue Saren to Ilos. Was that not the _right_ thing to do?"

"Course it was," Shepard admitted. "This just…feels differently to me."

"I know it does, but it is the only way," Liara murmured. "And when this mission is done, I know that you will tell Cerberus that you are done with them in the most flamboyant and colorful terms you can come up with."

Shepard smirked, bobbing her head before taking a swallow of her whiskey, then rose, pacing a little. "It doesn't help the fucker isn't playing straight with me," she grumped. "He did it on purpose, Li. Made it so that Ash would be on that colony, arranged it so the Collectors would be sure to hit it. He risked her life, my crew, on purpose. Seems the Collectors are not just after me but after anyone that has association to me."

Turning she looked at Liara sternly. "Which means you're on their list _too_, Tianlán. I don't think they'll be able to find you at Hagalaz but you need to be as careful as possible, dong ma?"

Liara suddenly looked hesitant and Shepard's gut went cold, eyes narrowing.

"_Tianlán…_"

"I am…not currently at Hagalaz," Liara admitted. Shepard's face went to stone and she strode over.

"_What_? Where are you? Why did you leave?"

"I am on Omega. We are actually departing shortly to return to the ship."

"We?"

"Sydney is here with me," Liara replied. "As security. Shepard, I…found my sister."

"You did?" the commander asked, surprised. "Why didn't you tell me? The _Normandy_ could have escorted you to Omega, or-"

"I know, and I knew that is exactly what you would do, which is why I did not tell you. Your mission is of far more importance than running a side-errand to ferry me to my sister."

"Li," Shepard sighed, shoulders slumping. "Nothing is unimportant when it comes to you. I want to keep you safe."

"I know that you do, Del," Liara said gently. "I want you safe as well…but your work is too important. More important than either of us."

"Li…" Shepard went over, lamenting that she couldn't hug or touch a hologram, making a helpless gesture. She sighed again. "So…you found her. That's good news, at least."

"I like her quite a lot, Shepard. She is very sweet, somewhat shy."

Shepard smiled. "I don't know anyone else in her family like _that_. Is she all right?"

"Indeed, she does remind me at times of myself," Liara said, then sobered. "However, 'all right' is a subjective term."

"What's the matter?"

"She became…upset, when I mentioned you," Liara murmured. "Quite strongly upset. Shrive had to take her to go and calm down. It seems Gellian's development of Eír was not for the sole purpose of retaining some part of Benezia. She was…designed…to be a weapon."

"A weapon?" Shepard stiffened. "I knew that woman was insane but to design a living _weapon_…"

"…a weapon whose intended purpose is to…to eliminate the one that killed Benezia."

Shepard went still. "You mean…_me_."

"Yes," Liara admitted, then held up her hands. "But it is not her _fault,_ Shepard. This anger that Gellian gave her, this hatred toward you…it is not her choice. She wants nothing more than a simple life, to follow her own dreams. She does not _want_ to hurt you."

"But she _will_," Shepard replied. "Because that's what Osco created her for."

"We can help her," Liara insisted. "There must be a way to…to shut this off, remove this…this _programming_."

Shepard's gaze turned inward, and she almost unconsciously drained the rest of her whiskey, before she nodded. "Mordin may be able to help," she said. "Chakwas, Miranda...we'll find the top of the line geneticists. If there's _any_ way-"

"Thank you, Shepard," Liara sighed in relief. "Shrive was…afraid. She thought that if you found out about Eír's true purpose you would attempt to remove the threat yourself. I told her that you were not like that but…"

"It's ok. I understand. If she cares about your sister then…well, I can understand."

Besides, she was used to being treated like a monster. It wasn't entirely undeserved.

"Thank you," Liara said again. "As long as she remains far from you there should not be a problem."

"If we were to meet face to face, do you think she could…?"

"Could take you? I have no doubt of it, Shepard. Gellian did her work well, and according to Shrive, she is the most powerful biotic she has ever seen."

"Yeah…" Shepard rubbed the back of her neck. "Probably best we stay far away from each other for now. She still on Omega?"

"She and Shrive are departing this evening for Aratoht" Liara told her. "It is in batarian space. It will make it easier for you to stay out of her way."

"No reason for me to go there," Shepard agreed. "All right. I'll pass this information on to Mordin and we'll see if we can't think of something. You just…you just be _careful_, ok? Hopefully I can stop by Hagalaz in a day or two, at least for a little while."

"I hope so," Liara said gently, again lifting her hand, the holograph hovering over Shepard's cheek. "I will see you again soon."

Shepard's whole body seemed to slump as the call ended, the asari woman vanishing. Dropping down to the bed again she leaned forward, face in her hands.

* * *

><p>"Interesting," Mordin's eyes seemed to light up…as much as they ever did…as he focused on the human woman standing in front of him. "Unique on genetic level. Osco's previous work, enhance biotic talent in humans. Makes sense, humans fairly biotically weak as a species, few exceptions. Enhance biotics in asari? Promising. Would need end-cap alterations, base-pair manipulation, perhaps even enhancement with other species' DNA or RNA chains. Would need sample, of course. Blood, tissue, very minor. Need to look at genetics to get idea where to start."<p>

"I'm sure we can arrange to get you a blood sample, at the very least," Shepard replied. "I appreciate you doing this, Mordin."

"Welcome. Must admit, scientific curiosity piqued. Unfortunately, secondary concern to Collector tech and current mission. Will get to it on free-time, when have samples in hand."

"Understood. I'll leave you to your work."

Shepard stepped out of the lab and into the CIC only to see a grim-faced Miranda heading her way with a data pad in hand.

"Should I say good morning, or are you going to change the 'good' part of that?" Shepard hedged as the woman approached.

"According to intel, geth have been sighted at the Far Rim, Dholen system," Miranda reported without preamble, handing the data pad to Shepard.

"_Geth_? You wouldn't be telling me if this was just a few geth hold-outs that needed mopped up."

"They're not hold-outs. Intel reports they just arrived. Dholen is the location of an old quarian colony, on the planet Haestrom. A quarian research team landed there shortly before the geth ships were spotted. It's hardly a coincidence."

Scanning over the information in her hand as Miranda spoke, Shepard's face suddenly went hard. "_Tali_ is heading up the research team?"

"Yes," Miranda replied. "And with the arrival of the geth she's likely in extreme danger."

"Joker! Put in a course for Haestrom, Dholen system! EDI, ETA?"

"We should arrive within two hours, Commander."

"Good, compile all information we have on Haestrom and what the quarian team is doing there. I want it ready in the conference room in ten minutes. Miranda, I want Grunt, Kasumi, and Samara in there as well."

"Understood."

* * *

><p>However long it had been since she'd actively fought geth, Shepard could never forget that rapid chittering sound they made, nor the high-pitched whine whenever one of them went down. With her expertise, Grunt's bullheaded muscle, Kasumi's stealth and Samara's biotics, they were pushing their way through the complex steadily, taking down the geth with ease despite the sun.<p>

That goddamn _sun_. It was putting out strong radiation, enough to immediately send their shields into overload the moment the light touched the generators. At its brightest points, it was even strong enough to make their radiation alarms on their hard-suits squeal in warning. They stuck close to the shade, _not hiding_ as Grunt emphatically pointed out, and worked their way deep into the ruins.

When they came across their first quarian body, Shepard felt her gut tighten before realizing it wasn't Tali. It also wasn't the _last_. Her face only grew grimmer with each sadly limp corpse they came upon.

_Don't think about it. Tali is smart. If anyone is still alive in this place, it's her._

Despite her mental reassurances, she couldn't help fearing for the girl's life. Losing Tali wouldn't be just losing a friend, it would be losing family.

Kasumi, who had gone to scout ahead as usually, returned in a flash of her cloak. "I found a working radio," she reported, passing it to Shepard.

Fixing its frequency she dialed in with her omni-tool and her helmet set, opening a channel. "This is Commander Shepard to any quarian that might be receiving. Do you hear me?"

There was a sputter, and then a male voice answered.

_{This is Kal'Reegar. Good to hear a voice that isn't geth but you picked a hell of a day for a visit, commander!}_

"Looks to me like I picked the _perfect_ day, you guys seem to need some help," Shepard replied. "What's your status and location?"

_{We are at the north end of the complex, past the central plaza,}_ Reegar answered. _{We're pinned down under heavy fire. Most of our squad is dead, there's only four of us left.}_

"We're on our way," Shepard replied, already heading that direction. "What's the status of Tali'Zorah?"

_{You know Tali? Oh, right…Shepard…you're her old commander. We've got Tali secured in one of the compound buildings at the end of the plaza. She's alive, finishing her compilation of the research data. The door is sealed and there isn't a man here that won't die before we let the geth reach her. That data needs to get back to the Flotilla at any cost.}_

Tali was alive. Shepard let out a breath of relief, then nodded. Now she just had to _keep_ her that way.

"Hold tight, Reegar, we'll be there as quickly as we're able to."

Halfway to their destination, they had to halt to take out yet another geth ambush. Once eliminated, Samara crouched by a quarian form limp on the ground. "Dead," she said sadly. "He and his companion. That leaves only two left."

"Kasumi, take a look ahead. Grunt, flank on the left. We're not losing another goddamn _one_."

As the thief vanished and Samara straightened, a familiar voice came over the radio connection.

_{This is Tali'Zorah, can anyone hear me?}_

"Tali, this is Shepard. I hear you're stirring up trouble again."

_{Shepard? But how did you…no, never mind. Am I glad to hear your voice! I can't get through to any of my people.}_

"I'm sorry, Tali…most of them are gone. I think besides you, Kal'Reegar is the only one still kicking. We're closing in on your position right now."

_{Oh, K-Keelah. There are geth massed just outside. Shepard, please…you must keep Kal'Reegar alive.}_

"Don't worry, Tali. No one else is dying here today. No one but the geth anyway. We'll be there soon."

"There is a single quarian still alive at the edge of the plaza," Kasumi reported a moment later, returning back to them. "The plaza itself has at least two squads of synthetics…and a heavy."

"Fantastic. At least Reegar is still alive."

Tali had sounded very concerned about the man…concerned enough to make Shepard wonder, and even more determined. Someone important to Tali was, ipso facto, important to _her._

The male quarian was still holding when they arrived a few moments later, sheltered against a shielding wall with a rocket launcher in hand. They could not see his face, of course, but his bearing and posture all spoke of high-stress, exhaustion.

"Commander, am I glad to see you," he greeted as they moved to his side. "Tali's in the building at the far end. They're trying to hack the door to get to her. I've been keeping them distracted but its hard going, especially with that heavy covering them. I've hit it a few times but it's got a repair protocol. I can't get it down."

Shepard hauled out her sniper and activated the scope, peering carefully around the wall and scanning the entire plaza. The heavy was right in front of the doors where several geth were clustered, trying to hack the door. She landed a couple of shots, making them duck for cover. In response, the heavy belched a ball of fire in their direction.

"Down," she barked, and ducked as the plasma sailed overhead and took out a chunk of the wall.

"See what I mean?" Reegar huffed.

Shepard's eyes turned inward for a moment before they clarified, and she looked at Reegar. "You got any rope?"

"R-Rope?" he asked, startled. "Uh…no. It's not exactly standard issue-"

"Shepard, I saw some rope back in the maintenance shed when we went past. It's not too far," Kasumi told her.

"Go, get it," Shepard ordered. As the thief took off, she regarded the quarian. "You're going to stay here and stay undercover. We'll take care of the geth and get to Tali."

"You'll need every body you can get," Reegar protested. "I can hit the-"

"_No_," Shepard said firmly. "I need you here in case reinforcements show up. Stay down and keep still. We'll take care of the geth and the heavy."

Kasumi reappeared, a bundle of rope in her hand, which Shepard took and hooked to her belt. "All right, here's the plan. Samara, Grunt, work up the eastern side. Kasumi and I will take the western. Keep to the wall, keep under cover and watch that heavy's fire. Once we've cleared out the foot troops Kasumi and I will get the heavy down and we'll hit it with everything we've got until the fucker is a pit."

Grunt grinned and bounced on his toes. "I like that idea."

"I thought you might. Now get moving."

Looking back at Reegar one more time she warned, "I mean it. _Stay put_."

"Aye ma'am," he replied. Shepard gestured to Kasumi and the others, and a moment later they were in the midst of hell.

The troopers weren't so hard. Tough as they were Shepard had taken out dozens before and these proved no more difficult. The hard part was avoiding the blasts of blue death from the heavy, and more than once a plasma shot had come close enough to feel the heat of it, even through the hard-suit. Painstakingly working their way up the western side to the main platform the heavy was positioned on, Shepard put her back to a pillar, sniping one final trooper before shipping her gun and grabbing the rope.

"What's the plan?" Kasumi panted.

"You ever been to a rodeo?"

"A…_rodeo_? No, never."

"Me neither, but I have watched a few on vid. The trick with big-ass dangerous things is to get in close," Shepard told her, unwinding the rope and withdrawing a flash-bang from her belt. She didn't bother to set the grenade, simply tied the rope to it firmly. "These heavies are just that…_heavy_…on top anyway. They're remarkably sturdy on those legs but like any animal…they trip."

"You sweep its legs out and it'll fall," Kasumi smiled.

"Exactly," she said, checking the knot before touching her radio. "Grunt, Samara, you in position?"

_{We are ready, Shepard.}_

"I'm going to toss you the rope in front of the heavy. As soon as you get it, toss it back to me behind it. Copy?"

_{Understood, Shepard.}_

"When I give the signal, Samara, I want you to hit the top of that thing with the biggest biotic push you can manage."

_{Will do.}_

Handing the other end of the rope to Kasumi, Shepard nodded toward the pillar. "Tie it off, tight as you can make it. Then hold on to your ass."

Taking the inactive light grenade in hand, Shepard ducked out from behind the pillar and tossed it along the ground as hard as she was able. It skidded past, just in front of the heavy's legs. Drawn by the motion, the tank tried to look downward at it but the angle was too awkward, forcing it to shift back half a step. By then the grenade was past, and Grunt was scooping it up.

Shepard had continued her sprint until she reached the matching pillar to the one she'd been hiding behind. Without missing a beat, the krogan pitched the grenade back at her, the thing trailing the rope behind it. The heavy turned its head again as Shepard scooped up the grenade and the rope went taunt against its far legs. Glancing over quickly to make sure Kasumi had it tightened, Shepard gripped hold of the rope and barked, "_Now!"_

A wall of blue biotics suddenly slammed into the tank's head and body, stumbling it slightly. At the same time, Shepard hauled the rope with all her strength. For a half moment, it almost seemed that the heavy would keep itself upright, its thin legs almost scrambling as it attempted to maintain its balance. Shepard hauled harder, and its legs shifted just enough out of orientation to turn the tide.

With a resounding crash, the huge machine slammed down onto its side. Shepard dropped the rope, hauling out her rifle even as she charged forward. The head, pointed along the ground in her direction, brightened and then burped, a ball of plasma fire sailing along the concrete directly at her.

With a gasp and a frantic leap, Shepard jumped over the sailing shot, flailing her arms slightly as her boots barely cleared it. Part of one pillar exploded outward as the shot struck it but Shepard didn't have time to look back. Her boots hit concrete again and she continued forward, focusing her rifle on the downed beast's head and opening fire.

Grunt let out a triumphant roar as he hopped up on the side of the flailing heavy, unloading three shotgun rounds into its head as well. With a shuddering whine, the great metallic beast fell still.

Grunt hopped down as Shepard landed a couple of more shots in the geth's head, just to be sure, then grinned at him. "Not too bad," she lauded, holding up her fist. Grunt happily balled his own, bumping his knuckles against hers.

Seeing Samara approaching unharmed, Shepard turned her head. "Kasumi?"

There was no response. Seeing the destroyed pillar, Shepard's brows immediately knit in concern, and she shipped her rifle, trotting back that way. "_Kas_?"

Some rock shifted and she saw the thief sit up, hand to her head. Running over, Shepard helped her move some debris, crouching down. "You ok?"

"My ears are ringing," Kasumi said with a faint groan. "But I think all my bits are still attached. I'm all right, Shep, it just knocked me silly. I forgot that you always manage to make things explode somehow."

Shepard helped her up to her feet, clapping her lightly on the shoulder once she was steady. "_I _jumped over it. What was your problem?" she teased. "You're _supposed_ to be lighter on your feet than I am."

"Tell me about it, you looked like a drunken frog," Kasumi chuckled.

"Ha, ha," Shepard shook her head, then turned back toward the huge blast doors, touching her radio. "Tali, you there?"

_{I am here, Shepard. Things got quiet outside.}_

"I did what I do best. The geth are down. Can you let us in?"

_{Unlocking the doors now.}_

The interface switched from red to green, and with the groan of old, rusted gears, the door began to open. Unlatching her helmet, Shepard removed it as she strode in, grinning toward the quarian girl standing over the console at the far end.

"I'm just finishing compiling the OSD," she said, then turned around. "Shepard, it is so good to see you."

"It's good to see you too, Mei-Mei," Shepard said, dropping the helmet and hugging her as she reached her side. "You ok? Not injured?"

"I'm fine," Tali admitted, returning the hug before drawing back. "I…wish I could say the same for the rest of my squad. This damn data had better be worth it."

"Its research, isn't it? About the star?"

"Yes. We took readings to try and determine why this star is aging so rapidly. There are unusual radiation spikes, dark energy disturbances but we weren't able to find anything concrete. I hope the scientists can make better sense of it than me. So much death…it had better be worth it."

She lowered her head a little, her posture going hesitant. "Kal'Reegar…is he…?"

"Alive and well, ma'am," Reegar said as he strode in. Tali blew out a relieved breath.

"Oh, good…you made it."

"Your old commander is a sight, Tali. To be honest I never quite believed your stories, until now."

"I just do what's needed," Shepard dismissed, then looked at Tali again. "Mind if we have a word…?"

She and Tali stepped away, out of ear-shot of the others before Shepard spoke again. "Back on Freedom's Progress, you said you were involved in something important. I take it this was it?"

"The end of it, yes," Tali told her. "I also told you that as soon as I was done with what I was working on, I would join you again. Trust me, I am _more_ than done with this mess. Reegar can take the information back to the Flotilla."

Shepard smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that. The more people I trust, the more familiar faces around, the better I feel about this whole disaster."

Tali gripped her hand, then turned and went back to her companion, handing him the OSD. "This is the research information. I will be accompanying Commander Shepard back to the _Normandy_. Can you make sure this gets back to the Flotilla?"

"Shouldn't be a problem, ma'am," Reegar replied, accepting it before he looked at Shepard. "You take care of her, Commander."

Shepard inclined her head in a nod, watching the young quarian man head back out of the bunker before smirking and lifting an eyebrow toward Tali.

"Wh-what?" Tali asked.

"Oh," Shepard chuckled. "_Nothing…_"

* * *

><p>"You were actually shooting bottles…<em>in<em> your quarters," Tali's smirk was evident in her voice as she shook her head.

"Yeah," Shepard grinned, letting some smoke drift up toward the filters. "You should have seen Lawson's face when she ran in. First she was shocked to see I wasn't dead, and then it was like she suddenly realized that she'd _actually_ brought back a wild-eyed, psychotically unstable lunatic."

"You're not _that_ 'wild-eyed'," Tali teased. Shepard chuckled, ashing her cigar.

The two women were sitting on the floor of Engineering, knees drawn up and backs to a console. Gabby and Ken were down at the other end, finishing up their duty shift and discussing something with hushed animation.

"I take it you two are getting along better now? You seemed more relaxed talking to her when we got back to the ship."

"Lawson's ok," Shepard admitted. "We…kind of understand one another now. And she's the reason I got to see Liara again so, I can't complain about that."

"How _is_ Liara?" Tali asked. "All I heard was that she's on some secret station somewhere."

"She's doing all right," Shepard said. "We're actually heading toward Hagalaz now…you should be able to see her sometime tomorrow."

"Oh, good," Tali's smile was once again evident. "It is nice to see old faces, some of the old crew. I missed this, Shepard. I never thought I would think of home as being anywhere away from the Flotilla but…the _Normandy_, her silent engines…chasing around the galaxy righting wrongs…this feels as close to home as anywhere."

"We missed you too, Mei-Mei," Shepard told her. "I'm glad you're here."

"Excuse me, Commander…"

They looked up to see Ken approaching, Gabby only a few steps behind. The Scottish man gave them a smile that made him look about ten years old. It was a hard smile to dislike.

"We were just goin' off-duty and we were wondering-"

"_You_ were wondering," Gabby pointed out with a smirk.

"It was a mutual wonderment," Ken shot back, glancing at her before looking back at the two seated on the floor. "Anyway, _we_ were wondering if ye'r not too busy…if ye'd like to play some Skyllian Five weth us."

"Poker," Shepard wrinkled her nose with a reluctant groan. "I don't know…it's been years since I've played and I wasn't ever any good at it."

Ken's eyes seemed to light up a little and he grinned. "Et's all right, Commander. I promise we'll take et easy on ye. Et's just for fun anyway, low credit bets."

She hmmed, uncertain, ashing her cigar again before tucking it in her teeth and shrugging. "I…_guess_. Might be fun. I'd like to relearn anyway, so long as you take it easy on me. What about you, Tali? You want to play poker with us?"

Even behind her helmet visor, Tali's eyes were wide and innocent. "Poker?" she asked. "…what's _poker_?"

* * *

><p>"Are ye fookin' <em>kiddin<em>' me?" Kenneth groaned as he slapped down his hand, Tali giggling a little as she scooped the pot toward her side of the table. "_'What's poker_?' the girl says... '_So long as you take it easy on me_' my ruddy _behind_!"

Shepard grinned, she and Tali both lifting a fist and bumping them together.

"I _told_ you," Gabby repeated. "You honestly thought the Commander _didn't_ know how to play poker? How silly can you get?"

"Well then why dedn't ye stop me?"

"And miss seeing you get owned? Are you kidding?"

"I take it you don't want to play another round," Shepard smirked, leaning back in her seat as she shuffled the cards.

"If he was smart, he'd stop now," Tali murmured. "We've got nearly his entire week's pay."

"Yeah, Mama Donnelly didn't raise no fools," Kenneth admitted, pushing back from the table. "I'm done. And I'm warnin' everyone on the ship about ye so no one _else_ loses their shirt."

As he walked away toward the lift they could still hear him grumbling, "_What's poker_? Can you fookin' believe I _fell_ for that?"

* * *

><p>"Shuttle is docking," Ori reported, glancing up from her station as Sydney, Wilcher and Liara walked past, the latter smoothing a hand self-consciously over her tunic. Sydney caught the motion and smiled slightly, giving a faint shake of her head.<p>

"Afraid she's suddenly not going to like you?" she teased gently. Liara blushed a little.

"No, i-it is not that," she replied, then shook her head. "It does not matter."

Truth be told, she was very self-conscious of the fact that she was about to be standing in the same room with not only her love, but her love's _ex_, a woman Del still trusted and thought very highly of. Though she knew she had Shepard's heart, the insecure part of her kept insisting that Sydney was a much better match for the commander, that they had far more in common.

She did her best to push such worries aside as they entered the bay, the shuttle already powering down, doors opening.

Shepard stepped down to the ground and headed forward, and Liara picked up her own pace, rushing in and flinging her arms around her. Shepard hugged her tightly, momentarily lifting her off her feet before setting her down again.

"Hey, you," she murmured.

"Shepard, I missed you," Liara whispered back. Aware of their audience, she reluctantly stepped back a little, beaming at the sight of a familiar helmet.

"Tali!"

"Liara, good to see you again," the quarian greeted, giving Liara a hug of her own.

"It is good to see you back under Shepard's command," Liara told her. "I am glad you were able to join her."

"So am I," the quarian replied. "_Someone_ has to keep her in line."

Garrus, Miranda, Mordin and Chakwas also emerged from the shuttle, Liara greeting them as well as Shepard stepped past, heading toward the pair waiting patiently a few feet away.

"Look at _these_ two sorry sacks of meat," she smirked as she reached out a hand, clasping Sydney's firmly. The two women hugged tightly, before Shepard slapped Sydney on the back and released her, shifting her hand toward Wilcher.

"_We're_ sorry sacks of meat?" the big guy rumbled, his hand almost enveloping hers as he grinned. He gestured at the fading bruises on her face. "We're not the ones that look like we tried to stop a train with their _face_, grunt."

"You're just jealous because I'm still prettier than you, _sir_," Shepard retorted, then called over his shoulder. "You still hanging out with this ugly fuck, Ori?"

"Yes ma'am," Ori called back with a grin. "He couldn't wipe his ass without me."

"Ain't that the fuckin' truth," Shepard beamed, then turned toward the others as they drew near, making introductions.

As Liara reached Shepard's side she unconsciously, possessively, put an arm around the human woman's waist, glancing at Sydney. She realized she'd done it a moment after it had happened, and tried to look non-chalant though she could still feel her cheeks heating.

Sydney didn't seem to have noticed, and if Shepard had, she said nothing, only draping her arm around Liara's shoulders .

"Were you able to obtain blood-samples?" Mordin asked after the introductions were completed, startling Liara out of her thoughts.

"Oh, yes…Shrive sent them and they arrived earlier today. I have them ready for you, in the infirmary. I…I will show you where it is-"

"I can show 'em," Wilcher offered, giving her a wink. "You should stay and catch up with your friends."

"Thank you," Liara said gratefully, stepping away from Shepard's side just far enough to hug Chakwas as the doctor stepped forward.

"It's good to see you, Liara," Helen said with a smile.

"We'll catch up at dinner," Liara promised, watching as Wilcher led Chakwas and Mordin toward the labs and infirmary.

Shepard looked around, realizing Tali had vanished, only to spot the quarian over beside Ori, both talking over the console.

_Trust a techie to find a techie_, she thought, shaking her head, then called out.

"Tali, we're going inside. Don't let Ori keep you too long."

"Ok, I won't Shepard," Tali called back, half-distracted.

"Zu fu ni, Mei-Mei," Shepard chuckled softly with a shake of her head, knowing that it would be hours, at least, before either Tali _or_ Ori even remembered where they were.

Turning back to Liara, Shepard took her hand as they headed inside to the main area of the ship. Despite the horribly violent storm just outside, for the first time in days, Shepard felt at peace.


	38. Chapter 38

The light from a dozen different displays cast over Shepard's face in a rainbow of colors. Ten minutes in front of them and she was already wondering how Liara did it. So much information, so much going on at once…she'd have lost her mind.

_That's why __**she's **__the brain and __**you're**__ the brawn_.

"The Broker had so many contacts it would take me years to catalogue them all," Liara was saying. "He had access to the top levels of nearly every government, research project, or colony – galactically. Already I have found weapons and ship technology that is above cutting edge, some barely beyond the drawing board. For example, here…"

She selected a screen, drawing it forward until dominated the view. "The turians have produced a ship-mounted design based on the magnetohydrodynamic weapons Sovereign used at the Citadel…the same kind of weapon that destroyed the first _Normandy_. It is called the Thanix cannon."

"Would this tech work with the new _Normandy_?" Shepard asked.

"It would, with very minor tweaks in design. I can even arrange for the resources it would need…but you would need a very talented team of engineers to build and install it."

"I have a talented team of engineers," Sydney piped up from behind them. Both women turned to look at her, having forgotten that she was even there, standing with Wilcher who had returned from the infirmary.

The blonde shrugged. "It's what Thanatos does," she said. "We're not mercenary. We still provide several services to the Alliance but we also do ship-work and design. I've got the men with the know-how, and I have the dry-dock. You get the schematics and resources to the Folly and we can slap any upgrades you want onto the _Normandy_. Fuck, we could rebuild her into a goddamn cruiser if you wanted."

"I don't think _that _will be necessary," Shepard said with a smirk. "I don't know that we'd be able to pay you-"

"Fuck _that_," Sydney snorted. "You let us keep the schematics when we're through and we'll call it even."

"Done," Shepard affirmed. "Li, if you can forward any upgraded ship designs, specifically focused on weapons and armor to the _Normandy_, I'll have my people brainstorm and see which ones are the most suited to our purposes. Syd, we'll forward the schematics to the Folly. As for resources-"

"Resources are not a problem," Liara told her. "I can easily arrange for more than we will ever need. Simply let me know what is required and I will have them delivered to the Folly as well."

"All right then. What about on a smaller scale? Biotic amp upgrades, infantry weapons, personal armor or shielding…what about that shield the Broker had?"

"He had a second prototype but I would highly recommend against using it. As you saw in the fight, there were some flaws in design that would prove more hindrance than help. For example, when initially powering up the shield's energy field renders the wearer completely immobile for several seconds. And while they are very difficult to compromise…well. You saw the result when they are."

"Yeah, and I have no desire to explode," Shepard agreed. "Scrap that then."

"He does have some weapons prototypes down in the armory, next to the firing range," Liara supplied. "If you like you may try a few out, and the ones you find suitable, I can submit the schematics to the Folly as well for reproduction."

She glanced around at Sydney. "Are your men able to build infantry weapons as well?"

"Honey, we can build you the Citadel if you give us the schematics and supplies," Sydney smiled. "We got you covered."

"Great!" Shepard grinned at her. Liara half glanced away, jaw tightening a little.

_It was just a smile. They __**are**__ old friends._

_Yes, but Shepard so rarely smiles like that, and…_

_Just….stop._

As they headed down to the firing range, Sydney fell into step next to Shepard, reaching over and tugging up her sleeve, snorting when she saw only unmarked flesh.

"I see you still haven't got yourself inked, _Delilah_. What? Your skin too pretty?"

"Nah, just thought it would be a little tasteless to have 'Fuck You Sydney' written on my arm, is all," Shepard shot back with a smirk.

The blonde gave Shepard a light punch to the shoulder, which only made her laugh, Wilcher chuckling as well as he tromped behind them.

Liara couldn't help the glance at the blonde, her gaze probably a bit more stony than she had intended. The former marine apparently didn't notice, only drawing back her own sleeve to show Del her latest work.

The armory flanked the firing range, the sight of which made Shepard whistle. "I haven't seen a setup like this on a ship before. I may have to move in, Tianlán."

"I would not complain," Liara smiled softly. Shepard gave her a wink, then headed over to the weapons display. Not fifteen minutes later, the air was filled with a barrage of gunfire as Shepard, Sydney, and Wilcher all unloaded at the targets on the far end of the range. Liara, leaning against the wall and watching them, idly danced a small flare of biotic energy over her fingers, her continuing internal argument hardly improving her mood.

_She left Sydney a long time ago. They made that choice. You know her mind and her heart, Liara. Shepard loves you._

_People can fall out of love…and back into it again. Sydney is human. Look at them. They're both warriors, kindred spirits. You can never share in what they have, not truly._

_They have only friendship. You are the one that has her heart._

_Do I? She's never said the words. I have not seen her in days, and yet she is talking and laughing with Sydney and I am here holding up the wall._

_She's also laughing and talking with __**Wilcher**__. They are her __**friends**__, Liara. You do not begrudge her time spent with Tali, do you? You could be right over there with them instead of sulking here like a child._

Shepard fired off three more shots with the new rifle she'd taken off the wall, before looking it over. Speaking to Sydney for a moment she handed her the weapon, pointing out some feature or another on the side. Straightening abruptly from her lean, Liara headed their way.

"Shepard, if I may speak with you a moment?"

Glancing up, Shepard blinked at her, then nodded. "Of course, Tianlán."

Excusing herself she headed toward the asari, who gestured at the door. "Somewhere private?"

"Yeah, sure…you ok?"

"I am fine," Liara said tersely, then turned and walked toward the door. Shepard trotted after her, shaking her head.

"That tone says you're anything _but_ fine," Shepard said as she caught up. Seeing the corridor was empty, she caught hold of Liara's arm to halt her, only to suddenly be shoved back against the wall. She stared at Liara's simmering blue gaze.

"Li-" She broke off as the asari suddenly kissed her, pressing against her tightly. Shepard found herself panting when it broke.

"Whoo…Li…_wow_, what's going on?" Shepard asked. "Not that…I'm not complaining, this is just…this isn't like you-"

Liara shook her head, coloring a little before she took Shepard's hand. Without answering, she lead the commander through the ship and into a private room. Given the look of them, they seemed to be her personal quarters. As she released her hand, Shepard halted her again, taking her shoulders.

"Li," she said with gentle concern. "_Talk_ to me."

"I-I am being foolish," Liara replied, visibly upset. "I know that I am but…I cannot help it. I know that you care about me, and-"

"Of _course_ I care about you," Shepard said, concern turning to full-on worry. "Slow down…just tell me what's going on?"

"She is like you are, she is strong, a warrior…human. You look up to her, admire her and I cannot help think that she is a better mate for you than I am. You have so much in common, and I am just a silly tagalong that-"

"Liara!"

"She is blonde!" Liara shot in a rage, her hands clenched at her sides.

"This is about _Syd_?" Shepard stared. "Liara, you're jealous of Sydney?"

Liara walked away, moving to a chair before dropping into a sit, lowering her head into her hands. A moment later she dropped them as Shepard walked over.

"Y-yes," she admitted, looking up at Del before shaking her head. "And _no_. I…I know that there is no reason to be. I know your heart, I do. I just…I am still so terrified I am going to lose you again. I hate…I hate feeling this way…"

"Tianlán…"

Going over, Shepard knelt down in front of her, taking her hands. The fading bruises under her eyes only made her gaze seem deeper somehow.

"Sydney is just a friend," she said.

"I-I know…"

"There is only _one_ person that keeps me going, Liara."

"I-I know, I _do_…"

"If all it took were her being like me than I'd still be with her. I don't want Sydney Rasler, not any more. I was young and it just…it was what it was. It's been over a long time. I want _you_, Liara. What I feel for you I never even got close to with Sydney. It doesn't even compare. I'm…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked her to come here-"

"No…no, it is all right," Liara replied. "I know why you sent her and to be honest, I quite like her. It is good that she is here."

Releasing her hands, Shepard cupped Liara's face, leaning forward until their foreheads were touching. "Tell me what I can do."

"You do not need to do anything," Liara murmured. "I will be all right. I will find a way to get over this."

Shepard slipped her arms around the asari, hugging her close.

* * *

><p>No one question Shepard and Liara's sudden disappearance for a few hours, nor said anything once they'd reappeared. After directing a few of the prototype weapons to be put into the shuttle, the schematics already in Sydney's omni-tool to be forwarded to the Folly, the pair stopped by the infirmary to see if progress was being made on that front.<p>

"Good news," Mordin said the moment he spotted them coming in. "First analysis of blood sample, promising. Incredible work, very impressive. No less than six types of cross-species genetic markers."

"What's that mean?" Shepard asked, glancing from him to Miranda. "Eír is made up of…six different species?"

"On a very basic level," Miranda nodded. "The dominant sequences are all asari, of course, but she has distinct markers from krogan, turian, human, drell…even vorcha."

"_Vorcha_?"

"Yes, vorcha adaptability…incredible work," Mordin gushed. "Managed to meld incompatible species DNA seamlessly, ground-breaking. Would have said impossible if not seen with own eyes."

"It is fascinating," Liara admitted. "But it is not the problem we are trying to solve. We need to know if there's a way to undo the programming Osco inflicted to make Eír hate Shepard."

"Ah, far more complicated," Mordin admitted. "Programming will take time to unravel, pinpoint. Could be conditioning, biological imperative written on genes, or cybernetic technology."

"We're not seeing any indication that Osco used cybernetics or nanite technology in creating Eír but we cannot completely rule it out."

"Conditioning or tech would be best outcome," Mordin told Liara. "Conditioning, easy enough to break, rewrite. Cybernetics, reprogrammable, removable. Genetic biological imperative…would be unfortunate."

"How would you fix it if it's in her genes?" Shepard wanted to know.

"We can't," Miranda admitted. "Not really. Not without completely tearing her apart on a genetic level. We might be able to block the affected alleles but the results would be spotty at best. The good news is, it's unlikely that Osco engraved this imperative directly on her genetic code. There would be far too many unknown factors and results, even for a genius like her to take into account. It would have taken decades of supercomputer calculation before being feasible."

"What else do you need to know for sure?" Liara asked. "More samples?"

"Would be helpful if we could examine subject in person," Mordin admitted. "Not feasible, however, given circumstances. Brain tissue sample also would be good, but also not feasible…deep brain sample, not compatible with life."

"If they could get us an actual brain _scan_, however, it would be immensely helpful in pinpointing any cybernetics, even ones small enough to be molecular. They should be able to obtain one from any normal doctor."

"I will let Eír and Shrive know," Liara agreed. "They want this problem solved as swiftly as we do. I'm sure they will not hesitate to send a scan."

"Good, good. Look forward to results," Mordin replied, then turned his eyes to Shepard. "Commander, would like a moment. Have received troubling news."

"News? What kind of news? When?" Shepard asked, straightening as she followed him over to the far side of the infirmary.

"Five minutes ago. Call on my omni-tool. Encrypted, untraceable line, location of Broker base not compromised. Urgent news. Former colleague, former student, Maelon. STG. Worked with me on genophage adaptation. Been taken."

"Taken? Taken by who?" Shepard asked. "What _adaptation_?"

Mordin actually looked troubled, lowering his head a little. "Work in STG, modified krogan genophage. Krogan adapting to original genophage, overcoming. Had to adapt, keep numbers down. Maelon was on project as well, assistant, student."

Shepard's glare was hot. "The krogan were overcoming the disease your people gave them and you helped adapt it so they _wouldn't_?"

"Correct. Had no choice. Krogan population would have exploded, overtaken galaxy. Genophage only solution, bring breeding rate down on par with galactic norms-"

"You crippled an entire species," Shepard said, voice low but her anger not even remotely soothed.

"Would have overrun galaxy, destroyed other species…sorry you are angry, do not understand. Was not a decision made lightly, only feasible solution besides extinction. Beside point. Maelon in danger. Was taken to Tuchanka by krogan. Possible they discovered his assistance on genophage modification, wish to punish him, perhaps force him to undo modification."

"Is that possible? Undoing the modification?"

"With time and study, yes…most things possible. Shepard, krogan may be torturing Maelon. Need to get him back safe. Can discuss moral implications of genophage later. Life on the line."

Shepard scowled, but she couldn't argue that. However much she may have disagreed with the genophage and the salarian's work to put into effect, she couldn't leave someone to be tortured or murdered because of it. And Mordin was clearly troubled…if nothing else, he was a member of her crew and she needed his mind on the mission.

"Tuchanka," she murmured, then nodded with a sigh. "All right. I was of half a mind to go there anyway. Grunt's been getting more and more out of hand…edgy, when we're not on a mission. Might be good to get a krogan opinion as to why."

"Good, thank you. Appreciate…more than can be said. Maelon last seen near Urdnot territory-"

"Urdnot," Shepard blinked, then grinned. "Might look up an old friend while we're there too, then."

Her smile vanished quickly as she looked over toward Liara, the asari chatting with Miranda and Chakwas. Her heart sank. If Maelon was in trouble they'd have to leave right away…and not tomorrow as they had been planning. She hated cutting her time with Liara short…they had so little of it together right now.

Looking back at Mordin she said, "We'll head back to the ship right away, set in a course for Tuchanka. Get what things together you need."

Stepping away from him she went over to the three women, nodding at Miranda and Helen. "I need you two to pack up and head back toward the shuttle. Miranda, can you round up Tali as well? We need to go as soon as possible."

"Go? I thought you were remaining until tomorrow," Liara's brows knit. "Shepard…"

"I know," she said softly as the other two stepped away. "Something urgent has come up. I need to go to Tuchanka. I'm so sorry, Sky Blue."

Liara's shoulders sagged a little. "At least we had some time…"

Shepard hugged her gently. "I will be back," she murmured in the asari's ear. "As soon as I can."

"I know…I will be waiting," Liara murmured back. "However long it takes."

* * *

><p>Tuchanka looked like a vast wasteland from the shuttle viewports as they descended. Ruins of once vast cities spread like jagged teeth from a desert, scorched by hot sun and scoured by sharp wind…scars from the Rebellions, uncounted wars. Most of the population lived half-sheltered in the lower half of the ruined cities. At first glance, Tuchanka might look completely deserted, but that was far from the truth. Besides the krogan, a surprising variety of wildlife also called the ragged deserts home…everything from varren to thresher maws.<p>

Grunt looked less than pleased as he scowled down at it, however.

"_This_ is Tuchanka?" he rumbled. "The great krogan home world? Birthplace of Shiagur? This is a scarred waste!"

"Looks can be deceiving, Grunt," Shepard told him. "Scars show what has been endured and the most ragged face just shows the great battles survived."

"Hmm," he conceded, then looked at her. "We will be seeing your friend? The warlord?"

"He acknowledged my message and gave us leave to dock," Shepard nodded.

"And he will help this…this _itching_ go away?" Grunt asked. "Figure out what's wrong with me? Help me be krogan?"

"If anyone can, he can," Shepard reassured.

The shuttle fell into shade momentarily as it passed through part of the ruins, into the lower reaches, before landing. As soon as the door opened and they climbed out, Shepard could smell the dry, burning heat of the upper desert, the earthy smell of broken concrete.

A pair of krogan, both huge, both armed, were waiting as they emerged, measuring them with distaste.

"The clan leader wants to see you," the largest one grumped. "This way."

"Krogan not too fond of aliens," Mordin murmured as they moved after the pair. "Unusual to let any but asari onto home world…even then, rare to happen."

"Why asari?" Grunt asked.

"Powerful warriors, and the only way a lot of krogan can actually breed," Shepard told him. "If there was no genophage even asari probably wouldn't be allowed here."

They moved into a big courtyard ringed with crumbling walls. Dozens of krogan eyed them, most with grimaces or glares, as they followed their escorts. Soon enough, however, Shepard saw a familiar face and grinned.

Wrex looked no different than he had the last time she'd seen him. It was shortly after the battle at the Citadel, when he'd left her crew and headed back here, determined to try once again to make a difference for his people.

When he caught sight of her his grin was no less, and he abandoned the male he was talking to, pushing past her escorts as if they weren't there.

"Shepard! My friend!"

"Wrex, you old varren…it's good to see you."

He clasped her hand tightly before his gaze shifted to Grunt. He ignored Mordin as if the salarian weren't even present. "And what's this? Picking up younglings to take my place?"

"Wouldn't have to if you'd get off your lazy ass and join me," Shepard joked. Wrex laughed, then jabbed a finger at the younger male.

"What's your name, boy?"

"I am Grunt," he replied.

"No clan name? At your age? Why not?"

"Grunt isn't exactly like other krogan," Shepard hedged. "He wasn't born, he was grown in a tank by the Warlord Okeer."

"Okeer," Wrex blinked, then bobbed his head. "You need the Rite, boy."

"The Rite?"

"All krogan go through the Rite when they reach your age. It proves them, gives them clan and purpose."

"Ah, puberty ritual," Mordin nodded.

"The Rite," Grunt rumbled, then nodded. "Yes. Let's do that. I want to do the Rite."

"It's not as easy or as fast as all that, boy," Wrex smirked. "If you want to be a part of Urdnot you will have to think on the matter, and our Shaman will have to approve."

"Sounds involved," Shepard said. "And it will have to wait a little. We have other business that must come first. Wrex, a salarian scientist might have been taken by some krogan near here. Have you heard anything about that?"

"Salarian?" Wrex pondered. "Yeah, my scouts mentioned something about a salarian. He was with the Blood Pack. That means Clan Weyrloc."

He half turned as another came up to him, giving Shepard a suspicious look before addressing Wrex. "Members of Clan Dundrin and Clan Tellvik have arrived."

The old krogan bobbed his head. "I will meet with them," he agreed, before looking back at his friend. "Go talk to my chief scout, Shepard. He can better direct you regarding the salarian. And after you're done blowing stuff up, come back here. We can discuss getting your boy his Rite…and I do believe we have some unfinished business to attend to."

* * *

><p>The scout passed along what information he knew, and directed them on where to find Clan Weyrloc. At first he was reluctant to even speak to them, his glares toward Shepard and Mordin sharp enough to cut ice, but apparently he did not want to risk angering Wrex. In the end, he even arranged for transport to the edge of Weyrloc territory.<p>

They narrowed their search down to an old hospital which was suspiciously well-fortified. Wiping out the resistance outside of it, which mostly consisted of vorcha and a few stubborn Blood Pack foot soldiers, they entered the building only to be greeted by a horrific site.

A body lay half rotted, sprawled across the lobby floor. For a moment, Shepard was certain that it was the very salarian they were looking for, before she realized it was, in fact, human.

Edging forward she crouched, brows knitting as her gloves lightly touched the mottled gray and blue cheek. Solemnly, Mordin stooped beside her, running an omni-scan over the remains.

"Human, male," he murmured. "Estimated age…nine Earth years. Ligature marks, collar scars, signs of malnutrition, physical abuse. Numerous injection sites, tumors…test subject, likely purchased from slavers for purpose."

"He's just a boy," Shepard whispered, touching his stiff dry hair. Then her face hardened and she looked at Mordin. "Why would they use a human test subject?"

"Humans good test subjects," Mordin told her. "Incredibly genetically diverse species. Won't do for final, more delicate tests but very useful-"

When he saw the look on her face he stopped, then cleared his throat. "Not that I would ever condone use. Despicable practice. Never test on species capable of calculus. Simple rule, never broke it."

Shepard got to her feet, her jaw set. "Apparently that's a rule they don't feel the need to follow. Let's get moving. There could be more 'test subjects' here, human or otherwise."

* * *

><p>As they moved deeper into the hospital, Grunt could feel a good fight coming on…feel it in his bones, in his plates. Shepard was angry. Great fights happened when Shepard was angry.<p>

They had not gone much further when they were confronted by a group of the Blood Pack, including one male that touted himself as the Clanspeaker, voice of Weyrloc Guld. When Shepard ordered him to tell Guld to release the salarian doctor and any other prisoners he might be holding, the prick started to wax on about how great Guld and Clan Weyrloc were, how they were going to cure the genophage and put the Blood Pack krogan at the top rung of galactic dominance.

When he boasted they would eat salarian eggs for breakfast, Mordin making a faintly strangled sound in response, Shepard shot him.

Grunt couldn't help his laugh, the rush in his body and blood. For him, that was nothing but greatness. A big sack of wind, boasting with words and threats. Shepard hadn't hesitated, hadn't wasted her breath with boastings. Shepard had no need to brag. Her bullet had taken the windbag in the eye, snuffed his life like a candle, and it was _fantastic_.

The battle was on a heartbeat later as the rest of their enemies lit into them and all too quickly were vanquished. He followed after Shepard and the salarian as they continued on, only hoping more would soon be forthcoming.

That was one lesson he had learned, however; follow Shepard long enough, and more was _always_ forthcoming.

_The tank imprints insisted humans were weak. Shepard isn't weak. She doesn't feel the need to brag to prove her strength…she just does it. She's just strong. Strange for such a soft looking creature, but she earns the respect of even a great Warlord like Wrex, silences krogan four times her size without hesitation. Perhaps she is not really human after all? Perhaps she is some new species that just looks like they do? Or was Okeer really just that wrong?_

The clan leader finally showed himself, and Grunt grimaced when he saw him. He was krogan, he was big and scarred, but he was not impressive when compared to the ancient Warlords, or even to Wrex. His clan had fallen easily and Grunt was disgusted to find such a waste of flesh as a clan leader of any kind.

_No wonder Okeer thought our people were dying_, he thought with a huff, feeling only disgust as he soon looked down at the dead male's body.

The final echo of gunshots, the smell of heated thermal clips, was still in the air as Shepard lowered her rifle. Mordin looked at his omni-tool, then gestured. "Labs through here. Most likely location of Maelon."

As they entered Grunt flared his nostrils, a bit disappointed when all the blood he smelled was old, overshadowed by the scent of antiseptic and chemicals. The labs were large, dirty. Stains of both grease and other unidentifiable fluids marbled the floors, and the buzzing of flies was audible. Spotting a form covered on a table, Mordin headed that direction, Shepard and then Grunt following.

"Krogan, female, no ligature marks, no signs of restraint…volunteer," the salarian said sadly, then shook his head, accessing her records. "Sterile female, subjected herself to testing, wanted to help cure genophage. Pointless waste of life."

"She probably thought her life was already wasted," Shepard pointed out. "A sterile female krogan…sterile thanks to the plague dropped on her people. Thousands of krogan children are born dead every day, Mordin. Why does this one bother you?"

"Am not monster, Shepard," Mordin said, shocked. "Worked on genophage adaptation, not to take life…to give it! Saved lives of other species, saved lives of krogan. Thousands born each day to kill each other over resources, struggle and suffer and starve as galaxy is overrun. Only path to that end is pain, extinction."

"And this isn't suffering?"

"Needless suffering," Mordin murmured. "Needless pain, trying for dead future. Careless, wasted. Young mother could have been leader, contributor, ambassador. Instead gave herself for this, for madman like Guld. So pointless."

"The krogan deserve the chance to build their own future, like any other race. This desperation was brought out through interference in their natural way of being," Shepard retorted. "The genophage may serve a purpose in all your projections but its effects are catastrophic, Mordin. The krogan are cycling toward extinction, not balance."

She shook her head, then reached over and gently touched the salarian's arm. "I know you thought you were doing the right thing but the truth is, you cannot see all ends. The future cannot be predicted by simulations and projections and hypothesis. Maybe the genophage was the right choice…maybe it was the wrong one. But right or wrong this is a side-effect of what happened and it must be acknowledged."

Mordin said nothing, only regarded the dead female a moment longer, before turning. "Come. Must find Maelon."

* * *

><p>"A tank-bred krogan?" Gatatog Uvenk glowered sullenly, nostrils flaring. "A fake? And you are seriously considering allowing him into your clan?"<p>

"It is my clan, Uvenk," Wrex reminded him. "All krogan are welcome here who can prove themselves. The boy is not a fake, and Shepard vouches for him-"

"A _human_," Uvenk scowled. "You're taking a tank-bred fake because a human vouches for him? I went along with your ideas, Wrex…radical as they may be. I am here even though you break many traditions to get your way but this is simple lunacy! You allow a weak, soft human to-"

Wrex stepped forward and slammed his forehead against Uvenk's, making the other male stumble. "You can say many things, Uvenk," he snarled. "But do _not_ say Shepard is weak. She is worth ten of you, human or not. Don't forget that."

"You know Shepard?" A young voice spoke up from nearby. Wrex glanced over at the dark adolescent krogan who had been lingering a few feet away, listening to the exchange.

"I do," Wrex told him. "You are…one that came with Dundrin Buhto, right?"

"I am Dundrin Thug," the boy replied.

"How do you know Shepard?"

"Don't," the boy grunted. "I've heard…stories."

Wrex huffed, pleased. "About the Citadel, no doubt."

Catching motion out of the corner of his eye he turned his head. Shepard, Grunt, and the salarian were crossing the courtyard toward him, looking a bit dustier but none-the-worse for wear.

"Stick around, kid," he said to Thug with a lopsided grin. "Here she comes now. You can meet her in person."


	39. Chapter 39

Thug could feel it as he turned his head, his green eyes landing on the human female. The rising heat in his blood, the tightening in his chest, the black mask descending over his mind. Anger. _Hatred_.

_Shepard_.

Here she was, in the flesh, not a dozen yards away. As small and soft in appearance as Osco had been, made up of bones to snap, blood to flow.

However there were some fundamental difference between Thug and Eír. The asari was created to be the weapon of Shepard's destruction. Thug was created originally simply out of Osco's own curiosity to nurture his genetic quirks. It was only later, very shortly before he was removed from the tank, that the imprints were made for him to be Eír's protector, to share in some of the hatred she had for the human commander.

Were he Eír, still not in control of her rage, the moment he saw Shepard he would have attacked…and she would be dead, along with her companions, and any of these other krogan that would attempt to interfere.

However, he was Thug, not Eír. He was stronger than most krogan biotically and physically…but not as strong as _Eír_ was, and his hate did not run so deep as to be uncontrolled. He was also not a fool. If he attacked Shepard now, he would die…if not at her hand, then at the hands of Wrex and his clansmen.

So, how did one plot the end of an enemy when one could not attack them directly? He would be sly, clever. He would study her, find her weaknesses.

He followed Wrex and a couple of the others as they went forward to meet her, and he noticed the krogan boy at her side. He looked to be about the same age as he did.

Thug smiled.

* * *

><p>Mordin had been understandably quiet on the way back from the Blood Pack's hospital, though it was unusual for the gregarious, rather energetic salarian to be so still and solemn. It wasn't until they were disembarking the Tomkah that he finally spoke, looking at Shepard.<p>

"Thank you, Commander. For not letting me kill Maelon. Would have regretted most deeply. See that now."

"You're not a murderer," Shepard reiterated. "I just reminded you of that."

"Still. _Needed_ reminding. Grateful for help."

"You're welcome," she smiled, clapping him on the shoulder as they headed back across the courtyard toward Wrex. The number of krogan gathered seemed to have increased, new faces watching them with wary suspicion as they went.

Wrex and a pair of others started their way, her old friend smiling. "I heard a report that someone was tearing apart the Blood Pack," he told her as he reached her side. "Look at you. Almost an entire clan wiped out and your pads aren't even scorched."

"I've fought harder foes than Clan Weyrloc," Shepard replied.

"Indeed you have," he grinned. "Oh, there is a boy here, from clan Dundrin, that wanted to meet you."

Wrex half turned, only to blink as he realized Thug was not behind him. A loud crack turned their heads and he laughed.

Grunt and Thug were a few yards away, face to face. Even as they looked, the pair lowered their heads and slammed their foreheads together again. Both looked happy.

"Grunt?" Shepard blinked, and Wrex shook his head. Leave it to adolescent males to greet each other by slamming head-plates, trying to determine the strongest.

"Ah, boys will be boys," he chuckled, striding over and measuring them with an appraising eye as they crashed together again. They seemed to be fairly evenly matched.

"Crack your skulls later," He said, stepping between them. "Business now."

"What business?" Thug asked, rubbing his neck.

"Grunt, do you still want to join Clan Urdnot? To go through the Rite?"

The blue-eyed boy bobbed his head, also rubbing his neck. "You are a strong warlord," he said. "You are Shepard's friend. I would like to be Urdnot."

"I still protest," the larger male that had come over with them growled.

"Uvenk…" Wrex warned.

"Protest?" Shepard glared at him. "Why?"

"This boy is nothing but a plastic fake," Uvenk declared, flinging a hand toward Grunt. "He is _not_ true krogan. And he is vouched for by a _human_."

He turned his narrowed eyes at Shepard, who glared at him right back, before she took a step forward.

Even Wrex blinked as Shepard slammed her forehead into Uvenk's, producing not only an audible crack, but actually staggering the krogan slightly.

Grunt barked in amused appreciation.

"Say what you want about me," Shepard growled at her opponent, ignoring the tiny cut she'd opened on her forehead, the thin slip of blood that trickled downward. "But Grunt is as krogan as you can _get_, and his blood runs hotter than _yours_. I wouldn't have _you_ on my crew to spit-shine my goddamn shoes."

"You…you _dare_…?" Uvenk gaped.

"Shut your drooling maw," Wrex ordered him, then looked back at Grunt. "I talked with our Shaman. He is willing to let you try the Rite."

"_He has no krant_!" Uvenk spat. Shepard scowled at him, then looked at Wrex.

"Krant?"

"Those who would stand with him, in life and in death," Wrex told her. "They are allowed to fight with him in the Rite. Without a krant, he cannot undergo this ritual."

Shepard straightened with a nod. "If he will allow me, I will be his krant."

"Yes, as will I," Mordin agreed.

"I'll be in his krant," Thug declared. Wrex looked at him.

"_You _boy? You are not even of the same clan," he said.

"Shepard and this…salarian, are not of any of our clans," Thug pointed out. "I will be in his krant if he chooses it."

"A monkey, a newt, and a boy?" Uvenk barked a laugh.

"That _monkey_ nearly knocked you on your ass, Uvenk," Wrex reminded him. "Now hold your tongue before I rip it from your throat! Grunt, it is your choice. These three have stepped forward as your krant. It is up to you if you accept them."

Grunt narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the other boy. "What is your name?" he asked.

"I am Dundrin Thug," the darker boy replied. Hearing it, Shepard stiffened and blinked a little. Thug was Eír's brother, the one who had told Liara how to contact the two asari girls.

_Clearly he does not have the same programming where I'm concerned_, she thought. _Otherwise this would be a huge disaster right about now._

Even so, she watched him with tense wariness as Grunt considered his offer. Finally his blue gaze shifted back to Wrex. "I accept. I will take Shepard, Mordin, and Thug as my krant. I _will_ be Urdnot."

"Good boy," Wrex grinned. "We will take you to the keystone. Once there our Shaman will explain more."

He clapped Grunt hard on the shoulder. Uvenk's glower could have lit fires if such a thing were possible, before he turned and stalked away.

* * *

><p>"This is the keystone," The Shaman, a wrinkled, almost wizened krogan grumped as he pointed upward. The sky was scutting with sand clouds over a huge structure. A weight of some kind was suspended from it. "It has stood here for untold millennia, and has survived countless wars."<p>

Shepard, Mordin, Grunt and Thug all looked up at the huge device. Wrex and several of the others had accompanied them to the site but had gone to 'watch from a better vantage,' as her old friend had put it. He had also seemed greatly amused by something, and Shepard was afraid she'd failed to get the joke.

"The Rite is simple," the Shaman continued. "Touch the keystone…and survive. You have ten minutes from first appearance. After that, low craft will come in and chase it off. Grunt, if you are still alive after then, you will be Urdnot."

"Ten minutes from the first appearance…of _what_?" Shepard asked warily.

"The thresher maw," the Shaman said simply, before he turned and walked away into the rubble.

_Fuck me, a __**thresher maw**__? Leave it to the fucking krogan…_

Grunt was grinning as he reached for the keystone, before Shepard caught his hand. "Hang on a moment."

"We need to hit it so the maw comes," Grunt scowled.

"I know, but you've never fought a maw before. We need a strategy in place."

"Planning always good. Keeps people alive," Mordin affirmed. "Maws…nasty business."

"What do you have in mind?" Grunt asked. Shepard looked around the huge courtyard, then nodded.

"Here's what we're gonna do…"

* * *

><p>The rumble as the keystone sent out its call was like the precursor to an earthquake…deep and primal, the knell of doom. A maw appeared fairly quickly, drawn in by the vibration and kept by the smell of fresh prey. As soon as it appeared, Grunt turned and ran off, vanishing into the ruin as Shepard, Mordin, and Thug opened fire.<p>

To Shepard, it felt like she'd been transported back in time. The huge beast was every bit as large as the one she and Liara had fought so long ago. The ringing sound of its shifting scales brought the ghost of pain back to her hands and side, where they had once been sliced by the razor edges.

"Keep moving, keep firing, avoid the acid," she barked to the other two. "Keep its attention but stay out of its goddamn way!"

Almost as soon as she said it she heard the sound of the maw drawing up its spit, and took off running. The acid shot out with all the speed and accuracy of a missile, slapping into the ground and turning dirt into a deadly quagmire.

_Liara's going to have fucking kittens if she ever hears about this_, Shepard thought as she ran as fast as her feet could carry her, hearing rock and dirt rumble nearby as the maw shifted its bulk. Her instinct was to charge in as she had before, get in close, find a soft-spot and take the goddamn thing out.

Resisting that impulse, she skidded to a halt and whirled around, just in time to rake some shot over its eyes as it oriented on Thug. Shaking its head with a furious roar it again focused on her, head darting down.

She felt the heat of breath wash over her as she dove, felt her foot suddenly shoved down toward the ground. Oddly enough, there was no pain though when she rolled and stumbled back up to her feet, she couldn't plant it right. It canted and rolled, uncooperative.

A shotgun blast slapped it across the face again and it reared back once more as Shepard stumbled against a wall, not daring to take her eyes off of it long enough to see what was wrong with her foot.

There was a guttural roar, loud but barely heard over the rumble of the maw. A form leapt off the top of a crumbling tower nearby, sailing through the air. Shepard barked a loud 'OOHAH!' as Grunt landed on the maw's head. Ignoring the scales that immediately started to cut into his armor, he braced himself, planting a foot against the edge of one larger scale and shoving it upward, exposing unprotected flesh. His rifle blazed into light as he aimed his shot into that flesh.

The maw revolted, swinging its head. Shepard and the other two moved forward, the commander limping as they concentrated their fire on the maw's eyes and gaping throat.

Even with all the noise, Shepard could hear Grunt laughing as he held on, blood splatting over his face and armor as he continued to fire. Once he'd gotten a big enough wound, he tossed his rifle aside and drew out his grenade launcher, firing it directly into the bloody rent he'd opened.

Instantly he released his hold, leaping off the maw. He hadn't even hit the ground yet when the back of the creature's neck seemed to explode, blood and chunks of pink meat flying into the air in a thick spray. Listing drunkenly, the beast let out a dying groan, then began to fall forward.

There wasn't time to call out. Shepard broke into a run, struggling to move as fast as she was able on her still uncooperative foot. Grunt hit the ground and rolled, bouncing up to his feet as if he'd just had a friendly tussle, still rumbling with laughter. The shadow of the maw coming down fell over her as she grabbed hold of Thug's weapon's pack and hauled.

She hit the ground next to the krogan boy as the maw crashed down not inches away, directly where he had been standing. As he pushed himself to his feet, Mordin appeared, reaching down to help her up.

"That was much easier than last time," Shepard panted as she got to her feet, giving him a dust-covered smile.

"Not something I want to repeat," Mordin replied.

"Thug, you ok?" Shepard asked as the boy got to his feet. He merely grunted an affirmative, nudging the dead maw with a foot. Turning her head, she straightened as she watched Grunt walking over. "Grunt? You five-by?"

"That was great, Shepard," he beamed, slapping his hands with a bounce. She noticed stains of blood on his palms and one thigh where the scales had sliced through, but he didn't seem to even feel them. "Great battle!"

"Shepard, you injured?" Mordin asked, noticing the way she was standing. Gripping his shoulder she lifted her foot, smirking as she caught hold of the end of one of the maw's teeth, pulling it out.

It had hit her just right to pierce the thick sole of her boot almost perfectly horizontally, entering at the right side and emerging from the left…without actually striking her foot. Holding it up, she regarded it as she straightened, then pressed it into Grunt's hand.

"Your kill, Grunt," she grinned.

"_Our _kill," he replied, then slung one arm around her and one around Mordin, hugging them both crushingly hard. "_**OUR**_ kill!"

Releasing them he grabbed Thug's hand with a delighted roar of 'Brother!' both boys slamming their foreheads together in triumph.

* * *

><p>"Do you know how many years it's been since someone actually killed the thresher maw?" Wrex asked. He was sitting on a broken chunk of concrete, facing Shepard as she dumped some water over her head, slicking her damp hair back and clearing away some of the dust. They were back at the clan meeting grounds, nearly every krogan there excitedly talking about the fight."No one's managed it since <em>my<em> Rite."

"I told you, Grunt is strong," she smirked, and took a drink. Wrex bobbed his craggy head, looking at her slyly.

"He is, very strong…but that strategy was _yours_. I know you too well, Shepard. You never stay back, always rushing in to slam into the threat, beat it with your own fists. You should have been the one on that thresher's back, not staying just out of reach and serving as a distraction."

"It was Grunt's Rite, not mine," Shepard said. "He needs this…to be strong in the eyes of his own people, to feel as if he belongs. I was just there to help."

Wrex looked at her evenly. "If more krogan leaders thought like you, there would be no stopping us, genophage or no genophage."

"They have _you_," Shepard told him. "I heard what you're doing. Bringing the clans together, sharing resources, lifting the krogan as a whole. You're the leader I always knew you would be, Wrex. Grunt could do far worse than learn by your example."

"Flatterer," Wrex sniffed, not displeased, then got to his feet with a sly grin. "So, Shepard…seems to me we still have a disputed matter that still needs settling."

Shepard's grin was as sharp and quick as a switchblade as she set her water aside. "Seems to me we do, Wrex. Seems to me that we _do_."

* * *

><p>Grunt had never met anyone his own apparent age (actual age being a touchy subject with tank-born creatures, of course). He had never really met <em>any<em> krogan until coming to Tuchanka but all of them seemed so much older than he was…until Thug.

Once they'd gotten back from the Rite, Thug introduced Grunt to his 'brothers', Buhto's sons who were only slightly older than they were, and before long all four of the young krogan were wrestling, head-butting, and talking over the fight.

"You were stronger than the human," Dundrin Krag told him. "You were up on the beast's head and she was running like a scared varren on the ground."

"Shepard is _no_ scared varren," Grunt told him. "She fought battles alongside Urdnot Wrex against mighty geth fleets, and we have both fought battles against the Collectors."

"Not easy foes," Dundrin Blik agreed. "And she plate-slammed Gatatog Uvenk. I saw that with my own eyes."

"Shepard…is not weak," Thug admitted, his voice soft, almost contemplative. "She makes mighty enemies and still lives."

"She is _still_ human," Krag protested. "No human will ever be stronger than a krogan!"

"Even you, Krag?" Blik snorted, shoving his brother. Another wrestling match ensued, only to be broken when Buhto himself strode up, idly flicking the boys apart with a flash of his biotics.

"Greetings, Urdnot Grunt," he said to the boy, who bowed his head a little.

"Greetings, Dundrin Buhto," Grunt replied.

"Your battle master plans her own death," Buhto said with some amusement. "You may wish to observe."

"Her own death?" Thug asked as Buhto strode off, the boys following after him.

"She and Urdnot Wrex are going to battle."

"The Clan Leader is her friend," Grunt said, surprised. "Why would they battle?"

"Why battle anyone?" Buhto laughed. "To see who is the _stronger_."

"Your soft human will be paste," Krag smirked. "You will see."

Grunt snorted, but said nothing as they approached the gathering group of krogan. They had clustered around a large pit, usually reserved to fight varren. Both Wrex and Shepard were in the process of removing armor and weapons, Shepard casting down her boot-knife and even her omni-tool as Grunt walked up.

"Shepard, why are you fighting Wrex?"

"Because I _can_," she said cockily. To any other species that would have sounded like a hollow reason, but Grunt understood it implicitly.

Dressed now only in her boots, black cargo pants, tank top, and Nan's battered gold cross around her neck, Shepard clapped the boy affectionately on the shoulder and strode toward the pit. Grunt watched her go, then smirked to himself, activating his omni-tool.

_{This is_ Normandy_,} _Joker's voice piped out a moment later.

"Joker, this is Grunt," he said. "A great battle is about to happen. I am going to record it so the crew can watch."

_{You're…recording a battle?}_ Joker asked.

"Shepard is going to fight Urdnot Wrex."

_{Uh, yeah, that's a __**big**__ ten-four,} _Joker's grin was obvious. _{I'll patch it through the ship system, project it in the mess.}_

_{Shepard would not approve of this, Joker,}_ EDI's voice cut in.

_{Shut up and get it set! I gotta get the crew together and start the betting pool-} _

Joker's voice cut out as he cut the connection, then opened a live-stream relay. Grunt finished adjusting his omni-tool to record the fight, and strode happily to the edge of the pit.

The crew were his clan, his family. He was Urdnot now, but he had been part of the _Normandy_ first. And one thing clan did was share good fights. Why EDI thought Shepard wouldn't approve was beyond him.

* * *

><p>Shepard hopped down into the pit just as Wrex did. The huge Clan Leader was bare of everything but a pair of trousers, his plates so ragged, scarred, and worn that they were literally ringed like the inside of an ancient tree.<p>

No weapons, no armor, no biotics. They would use only their bodies and their wits. First one down on the ground longer than a count of five would be the loser.

Unaware of Grunt standing at the edge of the pit, his omni-tool recording them and casting their holographic images back to the mess hall on the Normandy, Shepard spread her arms wide, stretching them and cracking her back as she bounced on her feet.

"You gonna fight, or are you gonna _hop_," Wrex prodded. Already the sound of the other krogan shouting and making bets was so loud she could barely make out his words.

Cocking her fists up to her face, Shepard's grin was primal, eyes alight. "Come on big guy," she urged. "Let's _dance_."

* * *

><p>The mess hall was crowded as nearly every single crewman left aboard the idle <em>Normandy<em> had gathered in. Joker had EDI demagnetize the table locks and they were swiftly moved aside to leave a large, clear and open space for the projection.

Rendered in light and shimmering faintly, Del Shepard and Urdnot Wrex circled one another, both battered and breathing heavy. Wrex swung a fist that sent the commander half spinning, sweat and blood flying realistically enough to make several of the crewmen duck. Kelly winced at the blow and Chakwas groaned, mentally tallying how much medi-gel she had on reserve.

Shepard caught herself on the ground on her hands and left knee, but instantly swung a mule kick back with her right foot , hitting Wrex in the groin with enough force the big Clan Leader barked. Nearly every man watching hunched over, crying out in sympathy at the blow as Wrex staggered back a pace. Shepard launched herself up, running forward a few paces, away from Wrex, before she leapt and planted her foot on what was, in reality, the wall of the pit, but appeared to be Ken Donnelly's chest. Pushing off, she whirled and cracked the side of her foot into Wrex's face, eliciting another cheer from the gathered group.

"Hey Doc, who you betting for?" Joker shouted to be heard over the din as he reached Helen's side.

"I'm betting I'm going to be patching our Commander up for _weeks_," Chakwas grumped.

"So…your money is on Wrex?"

"Are you kidding? Put twenty on Shepard for me," she grinned.

Miranda stood beside Kelly, a very displeased look on her face as she watched the goings-on. "Fist fighting with a krogan? After taking on a thresher maw? I swear sometimes the woman is suicidal."

"There is a difference between wanting to die…and wanting to live," Kelly reminded her. Miranda glanced askance at her, then shook her head. As much as she seemed to disapprove, Kelly noticed the XO made no move to actually _stop watching_.

Wrex landed another blow hard enough the whole group winced in sympathy. Shepard doubled over, coughing and struggling to breathe, bent over her stomach and falling to her knees. As she struggled to rise the big krogan stepped around her and slammed a forearm down across her shoulders, driving her to her hands and knees.

"He's going to kill her!" Tali blurted, alarmed.

"Wrex would never kill Shepard," Joker said, but even he sounded doubtful, wincing with a gasp as Wrex slammed a kick into Shepard's gut that actually lifted her into the air a foot before sending her crashing back down.

Shepard was on the ground, but not quite all the way down. Moving weakly she tried to get to her feet again, only to be hauled there bodily as Wrex grabbed a fistful of her hair, wrenching her upright. Her nose was bleeding, one eye swollen shut, the healing bruises on her face almost lost under new ones. Her arms were uplifted, grabbing at Wrex's hand as she tried to get his grip loose.

The krogan smirked, then blanched in surprise as Shepard wrenched around, tearing a good few strands loose of her scalp before landing a terrific punch directly into his eye. He recoiled, a follow-up punch into the hollow of his throat loosening his hold on her, making him gape and gag.

Reaching into his mouth Shepard grabbed hold of his tongue and hauled him forward, slamming her forehead into his head-plate with as much force as she had head-butted Uvenk before.

"Oh for Christ's sake," Chakwas grimaced. "That's a concussion right there."

Wrex was stumbled by the motion, but so was Shepard. She staggered back a pace, nearly falling into a sit before she managed to catch herself with one hand, shoving herself back upward.

Reorienting himself, Wrex snarled and lowered his head, charging at her. Shepard barely stepped aside in time and poor Gabriella let out a little scream as she darted out of the way of the holographic krogan, forgetting for a moment he wasn't real.

Wrex crashed into the invisible wall of the pit and staggered back again, shaking his head, and tried to whirl. Shepard ducked under his arms and landed another blow to his throat before he caught her arm and wrenched it.

"And…one broken shoulder. Fan-bloody-_tastic_," Chakwas noted, flinging up her hands.

Shepard drove the elbow of her freehand toward his throat again, the blow just enough to win her freedom once more.

It was clear both she and Wrex were hurting. Wrex's eye was swollen shut in almost perfect mirror of hers. As they both wobbled on their feet, regrouping, Joker's omni-tool began to buzz.

He only half glanced at it, irritated at the interruption, before doing a double take. Stepping back away from the crowd he answered the call, audio only.

"Uh, _Normandy_…"

_{Joker, thank the Goddess. I have been trying to reach Shepard but her omni-tool is deactivated. Is she on a mission?}_

"Uh…you could say that," he hedged, half glancing over the heads of the cheering crew as the fight was rejoined. "She's…definitely _busy_."

_{Joker, what is going on? What is that noise?}_

"The crew is just enjoying some entertainment," he said swiftly. "You know, bit of downtime while Shepard's on Tuchanka-"

Liara was not a fool, and her stern voice only made Joker cringe when she responded. _{Joker, you do realize I am the Shadow Broker. I will find out what is going on if you do not tell me. Is Shepard all right?}_

"She's fine, really, she just…._OOH_!"

He couldn't help the cry as Shepard's face came into contact with Wrex's knee.

_{That's it,}_ Liara said sternly. _{If you do not tell me what's going on right now, Joker, I swear the next time I see you I will fold you in half…backward!}_

Joker's head ducked and he gestured helplessly, even though she couldn't see it. "It's _nothing_, really," he said quickly. "Shepard and Wrex are just…settling a bet, that's all."

_{Settling a bet?}_ Liara sounded bewildered. _{What be- oh, Goddess…the elevator. Joker, tell me that Shepard and Wrex are_ **not **_fighting…}_

"It's….moderated," Joker said reluctantly, then quickly followed up with, "It's all just friendly, Liara, really…she probably needed to blow off some steam after the thresher-"

He literally bit his lip as he realized what he'd just said. The hole he was in just got a thousand feet deeper.

_{Thresher…__**maw**__? She fought a_ _**thresher maw**__?}_

" Just a _little_ one…"

The call suddenly disconnected and Joker could feel his guts tighten into a little ball. Idly he wondered who would end up dying first when Liara got hold of them…Shepard, or _him_.

* * *

><p>Shepard was wobbling back and forth, her stance hunched and clearly exhausted. Blood dripped over her face, sweat-soaked hair hanging and sticking to her cheeks. One eye was completely closed with swelling, the other only half-lidded but almost fever bright.<p>

Her left arm hung from a broken shoulder, her stomach felt full of molten metal, her ankle was sprained and swelling enough to tighten her boot uncomfortably.

Wrex was panting as well, similarly half-blind, his breathing ragged around his swollen throat. His stance also showed exhaustion, his teeth smeared with blood as he bore them at her.

"Surrender, Shepard," he rasped.

"After _you_," she panted. Her trembling legs gave out and she dropped to her knees before forcing herself up again. "I'm just…getting warmed up…"

He managed a half-hearted charge, but it was fast enough she barely limped out of the way in time. His swing glanced his forearm off the back of her head and she stumbled to her hands and knees again, crawling away and trying to get up. All she could hear were the roar of the krogan watching her.

Turning into a sit, she saw Wrex had also fallen to his knees and was forcing his way back to them, swaying dangerously.

"Surrender," he panted again.

"Not today," she coughed in return, bracing herself on the wall of the pit and struggling back to her feet.

He swore, spit a stream of blood to the side, planting his hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath.

"Rematch?" she asked after a moment, crimson dripping from her chin and lip.

He shook his scarred head once, then managed a thick laugh. "Rematch. Next time, Shepard."

It was no victory, but emerging from a fist-fight with a krogan Warlord in a draw was no laughing matter. Turning toward the wall of the pit she rested her head on the dirt, lifting her one good arm. She felt it grasped, Grunt helping to haul her out after switching off his omni-tool. Reaching level ground she managed to keep her feet, looking behind her as Wrex was hauled out as well. Their eyes met for a moment, and Shepard smirked as Wrex nodded.

"A _draw_?" Krag snorted as Shepard started a weaving course away from the gaping pit, splashes of black and red flashing in her vision, every muscle burning. "I _knew_ humans were weak. I told you so-"

He jerked back with a howl of pain as Shepard lifted her fist, knuckles split and bleeding, and planted it in his eye. As he fell back into a sit she continued on her way, Grunt following and giving the other boy a smirk.

"Shepard , you will always be my battle master," he told her as he got back to her side, resting a hand on her shoulder. "No one else compares."


	40. Chapter 40

Sydney smiled as she leaned against the corridor bulkhead, opening the flashing message on her omni-tool. A holographic rose appeared, hovering over her arm, and her smile grew softer as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear almost self-consciously. Clearing the image she read the text message accompanying it.

_Admit it. I got you to smile. I remain utterly terrific and you know it._

Shaking her head she quickly typed a reply.

_Egotistical you mean, and I admit nothing. Just a heads up, some resource shipments will be coming in to the Folly soon, along with some design schematics. Going to make you boys earn your goddamn pay._

She sent it, and only a few moments later a reply appeared.

_You always did know how to talk dirty, you flirt you. If you want in my pants just say so._

She shook her head with a snort of laughter, clearing her omni-tool and straightening as she headed in to the main hub.

Just as the doors parted something big flew at her face. With a dart, she barely got out of the way in time as the chair, lit with biotic fire, went tumbling down the corridor. "Holy fuck!"

Gaping into the room she spotted Liara, lit up with biotics like a torch, a scowl on her face as she grasped another chair with the same energy, and pitched it against the wall.

"Uh…something _wrong_ sweetie?" Sydney ventured.

Liara stalked toward her, biotics only slightly dying as she went. "Prepare your ship. We are going to rendezvous with the _Normandy_ at Tuchanka."

"Why? What's happened?" Sydney asked, alarmed now as she fell into step behind the asari. "Has something happened to Del?"

"It is not what _has_ happened to Del that is the issue," Liara stated, before her voice lowered dangerously. "It is what is _going_ to happen to her…"

* * *

><p>Shepard sat on the bench in the idling shuttle, the door open and waiting for Grunt to finish his goodbyes to his new friends. Mordin was sitting beside her, the shuttle's small medi-kit on his lap as he treated the cuts on her face.<p>

"Broken nose, cracked teeth, broken shoulder, two fingers, bruised spleen, pancreas, fractured ankle, evidence of concussion, minor sub-orbital hemorrhage…"

"Is that all," Shepard joked, holding on to her side with her least aching hand. "Good to know he barely touched me."

"Shoulder will have to be surgically repaired," he declared. "Helen will be most displeased."

"Eh, I keep her in business," Shepard smirked tiredly, then turned her head toward the open door of the shuttle as she heard Grunt's voice…and another's. Both sounded irritated.

Getting to her feet, ignoring the wave of dizziness that came over her, she limped carefully over to the door and looked outward.

Grunt was standing on the landing platform, talking with Gatatog Uvenk. A pair of the older male's were lingering nearby as well. Neither Grunt nor Uvenk looked pleased.

"You are strong, I will admit," Uvenk scowled. "And you were created by one of us, which is preferable than being a twisted mimicry sculpted by aliens. However you are wasting yourself under the human's command."

"_Wasting_ myself?" Grunt asked narrowly. "The enemies we fight threaten galaxies. Who are your enemies, Uvenk? Pyjak? Dust and stone?"

"My enemies are enemies to all the krogan," Uvenk said hotly. "The humans are weak, soft, self-important monkeys! It is an insult that you follow them."

"I don't follow them, I follow _Shepard_. She helped me to kill a thresher maw. She stood firm against Urdnot Wrex. And as I remember, she nearly knocked you on your _ass_."

"If you have a problem with _me_, Uvenk, you need to take it up with _me_," Shepard interrupted, gingerly hopping down to the ground. "Grunt has chosen his clan and his battle master. Why do you care if he follows a human or not?"

"It is an insult to the krogan," Uvenk snarled, striding over and glaring down on her face. Instantly Mordin tensed, weapon in hand and pointed at the male. In response, Uvenk's two lackeys also readied their guns.

"No, _that's_ not the reason," Shepard glared into his eyes. "You thought he was weak plastic, but then he proved he was strong. Oh, and not just _strong_, but strong enough to kill the _thresher maw_. So you started thinking. Such a strong krogan should be used to glorify Gatatog instead of Urdnot, right? You're not thinking about the krogan, you're thinking only about _you_, you and your tiny little clan. Wrex is thinking about _all_ his people, _all_ clans, but you can't stand that, can you? You're nothing but a mewling greedy little coward-"

Uvenk snarled and swung out his hand to strike her, only to have it grabbed by Grunt. Snarling himself, Grunt shoved him back, flinging him to the ground. Mordin and the two lackeys tensed, and Shepard drew her side-arm, aiming it at Uvenk as well.

"You are weak and not worthy of respect," Grunt huffed, then spat at Uvenk's feet. "Your blood isn't even worthy enough to soil the bullets of my krant."

Turning he headed past Shepard and into the shuttle. She leveled a good, one-eyed glare at the sprawled krogan and shipped her pistol again, following him. Mordin reluctantly lowered his, offering his hand to help Shepard inside.

"_Come back here_," Uvenk roared, getting to his feet. "Don't you _dare_ ignore me, boy! Don't you ignore-"

His rant was cut off as the shuttle door closed, the vehicle lifting off the pad in a roar of engines that completely drowned out the angry krogan's useless threats.

* * *

><p>"Well, Mordin is correct," Chakwas said as she looked down at Shepard, removing the diagnostic screen. "That shoulder is going to need surgery. And I don't want to hear the first complaint about being kept off duty for the next three days. This is what happens when you get into a boxing match with a krogan."<p>

"Awesome match though it was," Joker replied from where he lingered nearby.

Shepard's brows knit as she fixed him with her good eye. "What do you mean…_awesome match_?" she asked warily.

"We all saw it," Chakwas told her, preparing her sedative. "The entire crew."

"_What?_"

"Grunt sent it up," Joker said quickly. "I thought he'd asked you first."

"You could at least have _won_, Shepard," Chakwas told her. "I had twenty riding on you."

"You were _betting_? Joker-" she began hotly, starting to sit up before Chakwas pressed her down again.

He looked nervous, watching as Chakwas put the injection to Shepard's neck. "Uh, that's not the worst of it…" he admitted.

"_Joker_…" she warned.

"I…kind of let it spill to Liara that you were fighting him…and that you'd fought a thresher maw…"

"_**YOU WHAT**_?" Shepard gaped. "Joker I'm going to turn your fucking intestines into a bu…"

She broke off, eyes rolling back, body going limp as Chakwas administered the sedative.

"You do realize you're dead when she wakes up," the doctor told him.

"Yeah," he pouted, rubbing the back of his neck. "At least this way, I get the chance to make out a will."

* * *

><p>Miranda stood stiffly, watching as the shuttle powered down, Liara, Wilcher and Sydney disembarking. The asari was noticeably stone-faced as she strode forward toward the lift, Miranda turning and falling into step beside her.<p>

"We didn't know," she told her. "I was under the impression it was shown with Shepard's knowledge-"

"I am not concerned with the crew seeing it," Liara said tersely. "I am concerned it happened at _all_."

"It was hardly her most shining moment," Miranda admitted. "She's just…well, she's-"

"She's _Shepard_, Liara," Sydney offered kindly.

"I have heard enough of _that_, thank you," Liara told her sternly. The lift doors opened on the Crew Deck and she stepped off, immediately making a beeline for the infirmary. Helen met her at the door.

"She's still out," she said as the asari moved past. "Surgery went fine but I'm keeping her off-duty for a little while. I…I'll just be out in the mess if you need me."

Wisely, Miranda and the other two also lingered out in the mess, and when the infirmary doors slid closed, it was only Liara and the unconscious commander sleeping on the nearby bio-bed left within.

Striding over to her side, Liara's gaze softened a little as her fingertips gently touched the bruises on her cheeks, stroking lightly over her black hair before she sighed, lowering her head. Silently drawing a chair over she sat, taking the human woman's limp hand.

* * *

><p>Shepard came back to herself in a haze of sedatives and painkillers. Thanks to Chakwas's administrations, the swelling in her face was all but gone, allowing her to open both her eyes as she struggled to focus.<p>

Sensing someone standing near and figuring it was Chakwas, she turned her head…only to blink as the blur was blue in color. Lifting her head a little she squinted, surprised.

"Tianl-"

"Do _not_ call me that," Liara's firm voice banished all doubt of the shape's identity. A couple of more blinks brought her scowl into sharp focus, and Shepard groaned faintly.

"Look, I can explain-"

"Explain? Fist-fighting with Wrex as some pointless display of bravado? Tackling _another_ thresher maw? Oh yes, I cannot _wait_ to hear this explanation! Here I am, worried that you are risking your life against the Collectors when in truth you are risking it over some…some _pissing_ contest!"

Shepard stared, startled not only by Liara's fury but by her actual words. Liara didn't swear, save the occasional 'by the Goddess' which hardly counted. 'Pissing' was fairly mild as colorful metaphors went but it was stark when one considered the asari's normal language use.

"Liara-"

"No! You do _not_ get to speak right now! Was this the urgent news that you just _had_ to leave Hagalaz over? You had to cut our time short because Wrex wanted to call in his _bet?_ A bet that was…simply ludicrous to begin with! And now you are injured, beaten and the Collectors are still out there…and I sit on that big ship, listening in on other people's lives while the woman I care about is-"

She broke off, her emotion getting the better of her. She turned her back on the bio-bed, folding her arms as she struggled to get herself under control again. Moving gingerly, her repaired arm still in a plastic sling, Shepard woozily got up into a sit, reaching out with her good hand and lightly touching the asari's elbow. "Tianlán…"

"If it were me, what would you say, Shepard?" Liara asked softly, only half turning her head. "Were I to risk my life and my well-being to simply 'have it out' with Wrex, what would you be saying?"

"I know…" Shepard murmured softly.

"Please tell me you did not leave me on Hagalaz to do this, Shepard…that I mean that little to you-"

"Of _course_ not!" Shepard said sternly. Catching hold of Liara's arm this time, she turned her to face her. "Liara, I went there because one of Mordin's old colleagues had been taken by the Blood Pack…or so we thought. I went to save a life, which in the end turned out not to need saving. Seems he was there willingly, but we didn't know that. Then Grunt expressed interest in joining clan Urdnot and go through his Rite of Adulthood which…_apparently_ involves fighting a thresher maw. Grunt took the real risks in that fight, it was important for him to be accepted among his own people. I didn't even get hurt and mostly just distracted the damn thing."

Liara's expression softened, but only the tiniest bit. Her blue eyes were still stone as she leveled them at Shepard. "And _Wrex_…?"

"That…was just stupid, I admit it," Shepard sighed. "I should have waited for a better time-"

"You should not have done it at _all_! A human being against a thousand year old krogan Warlord? No weapons, no armor…it is a miracle you were not killed!"

"I'm tougher than that, Li," Shepard told her. "And you know perfectly well Wrex wouldn't kill me. I just…needed to do it. Maybe it was stupid bravado or…maybe I was trying to impress Grunt. I don't know."

"Impress…_Grunt_?" Liara looked surprised.

Shepard shrugged weakly. "He seems to look up to me," she admitted. "I mean, when you think about it, I'm the first person that he saw with his own eyes. Big as he is, he really is just a kid, Liara and…I don't know."

Liara was silent a moment, but her gaze softened further. "And yet you think that you would be a terrible parent," she chided gently, managing a faint smile. "You are _already_ parenting, Shepard."

"Well, being a krogan 'mother' is a pain in the goddamn neck," Shepard smirked, teasing lightly. Still feeling a bit muzzy from the medication she licked her lips with a sigh. "Liara, I fucked up. I did, I admit it. I'm sorry."

Liara glanced aside a moment, before she nodded slightly. "I cannot change who you are, Shepard," she admitted. "I do not even want to try. I just have to accept that sometimes, that means you will be throwing yourself into a fist-fight with a krogan. You would not be the woman that you are otherwise."

She looked back at her, meeting her eyes. "I do hope, however, that now that he's beaten you, this will be completely out of your system-"

Shepard blinked slowly. "Hmm? Oh, he didn't beat me," she said.

"What?"

"He didn't win," Shepard said. "It was a draw, actually. Neither of us won."

"Goddess," Liara lamented, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Can you at least _wait_ for a few years before you attempt a rematch?"

"Of course…" Shepard murmured, then caught her hand, drawing her forward between her knees. Hooking her good arm around the asari's waist, she looked up at her face. "Besides…my plan kind of worked."

She gave a lopsided grin as Liara's brows knit. "Plan?"

"I had _one_ day with you on Hagalaz, right? Well, now I have three whole days off duty and look…here you are on the _Normandy_…with _me_."

Liara's look was wryly skeptical. "Do _not_ try and tell me you planned this just to get more time with me, Shepard. I am not _that_ naïve."

"I'll never tell," Del grinned languidly, the hand on Liara's lower back trailing lower still. Liara arched a brow, then firmly caught it and drew it back up again.

"I have a lot of work on Hagalaz," she hedged.

"Feron can do it," Shepard grinned lazily.

"Oh _can_ he? Even if that is true, you are hardly in any shape-"

"I just took on a krogan Warlord," Shepard's grin didn't fade as she teased. "I can do _anything_."

"You need to rest and heal, Shepard," Liara said firmly.

"C'mon. You're telling me you'll let me sleep all by my lonesome in that great big empty bed?"

Liara smirked, arching her brow again before she turned and strode out of the infirmary. Shepard chuckled and gingerly shifted until she was laying down again, letting out a grunting breath of relief as she finally settled, wincing at the ache that could still be felt, even under the pain meds.

"Ouch."

* * *

><p>The sky was dark and sickly gray, roiling with storm clouds. Outside the lane was churned to mud, the heavy downpour having not let up for a full day. Heavy puddles had formed, rippling and splashing amongst swamped out plant-life.<p>

"What are you looking at?" Shrive asked, coming up behind the woman standing in the window and peering over her shoulder.

Eír smiled. "The most wonderful sight I have ever seen," she admitted.

"Really?" Shrive looked again. "All I see is gloomy rain and wet."

"Gloomy rain and wet out of our _own_ front window, at our _own_ colony, at the start of our _own_ lives," Eír pointed out, grinning at her. "I can think of nothing better than that."

"Sun would be nice," Shrive smirked, before lightly kissing her temple. "I honestly do not know how I feel about this colony. It is so cold…"

"It is their cool season," Eír reminded her. "And you are too used to Tuchanka's heat. You will adjust."

"Yeah, maybe. In the mean time I am turning up the heat. _Again_."

Eír's smile followed Shrive as she went over to the environmental controls to adjust them. The pre-fab was fairly small…only a single bedroom, bath and a tiny living space with a even tinier kitchenette. It was the best they could do until Shrive actually started to work and began bringing home credits. Eír had only begun contemplating what _she_ wanted to do…sitting idly at home while Shrive worked was _not_ a consideration…but Teful had only arranged one job. It would take time for the batarian community to even trust them, let alone for more avenues of work to become available.

As Shrive straightened from the controls, Eír went over and hugged her close, nuzzling under her chin a little. "_I_ know what we can do to keep warm," she teased in a low voice.

"I swear you are insatiable, sweet one," Shrive smiled, holding her close.

"I cannot help it," Eír cooed, nipping slightly at her chin. "I am so happy. Here with you, living how we want, how _we_ choose. I want to be with you for eternity, Shrive. Making a home with you, having wonderful daughters..."

She nuzzled the other woman again, before kissing her softly. "I want to have your daughters," she whispered when the kiss broke.

"There will be plenty of time for that," Shrive told her, rubbing the tip of her nose against Eír's. "There is no rush. A decade, maybe half a century, and we will be well-established, secure…and we will have the most beautiful daughters the asari have ever seen."

Eír giggled with a smile before kissing her again, pressing close and trying to stoke the same fires in her love that she was feeling. There would be time enough for daughters, yes, but for now…she had Shrive all to herself, and she planned to make the most of every moment of it.

A buzz broke the moment, and Eír groaned faintly as she realized it was an incoming communication. Bussing her forehead, Shrive glanced over at the wall display. "It is your brother. You had best take it. There will be time enough for this in a little while."

"He had better have a good reason for calling now," Eír lamented, before reluctantly releasing the other asari and moving over to accept the call.

Being as they were currently just shy of being completely broke, it was not a full holograph system but rather a simple two-dimensional display. Thug's face appeared on the wall and Eír smiled at him.

"Thug, it is good to see you."

"Eír," he stated simply, giving her half a nod. Then, in his typically brusque krogan way he said, "I fought with Shepard."

Shrive turned to look at him even as Eír straightened, stiffening. "You fought her?"

"No," he replied. "I fought _with_ her. We came to Urdnot territory so Buhto could join his support to Urdnot. Shepard was there with a male named Grunt who was presented for his Rite. She was part of his krant, and so was I."

"_Why_?" Eir said, thinly masked fury breaking in her voice. "Why did you not just _k-"_

She broke off with a pant, covering her face. Shrive immediately went over and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I am all right," Eír murmured, getting herself under control.

"I couldn't fight her, not there," Thug said. "I would have been slaughtered by Urdnot if I had even tried. So I watched, and listened instead. She is a great warrior, Eír. She stood with us against the thresher maw and battled Urdnot Wrex fist to fist. She is more formidable than she looks."

The respect in his voice was clear. Krogan may hate an individual, but so long as that one proved themselves strong, a worthy enemy, they respected them probably more deeply than any other species could hope to understand.

"Grunt recorded her fight against Wrex. He gave me a copy when I asked. I can send it to you."

"Why would you do that?" Shrive wondered.

"For study," he told her. "Eír can see the way she moves, the way she fights-"

"Eír is _not_ going to fight Shepard," Shrive said firmly. "Not ever. We're finding a way to stop the hatred that Gellian implanted in her."

"Oh?" Thug looked at Eír, who nodded.

"Yes," she affirmed. "Shepard has never harmed me, and she has the heart of my own sister, Thug. I do not wish to fight her, and I cannot carry around Mother's rage any more. Liara is finding a way to help me undo this imperative, so that Shrive and I can live normally, so that Liara can be my family without having to worry about me killing her mate."

"I see," Thug hmmed, then shrugged. "Ok. I will keep the recording, just in case. If nothing else, it is a good fight."

As the call ended Eír lowered her head again, rubbing a hand over her face. Feeling Shrive's hand on her shoulder she said, "This has to stop, Shrive…it just has to."

"I know, sweet one," Shrive murmured gently. "I know."

* * *

><p>"I see you still have all your parts," Kelly commented as she stopped by the pilot's chair, passing Joker a small data pad with the Engineering report on it.<p>

"Yeah, so far," Joker said. "I'm hoping if I don't leave the helm as long as Liara's onboard, they'll forget I exist."

"You do realize she's going to be here for three days," Kelly pointed out.

"I do. I…haven't quite figured out the bathroom breaks part of my plan yet, but I will."

Kelly smirked, then leaned back on a console, folding her arms. "Well, _I_ hope they don't kill you. The _Normandy_ would be less fun without you around."

"_Really?"_ Joker blinked at her.

"Of course. Who would pipe in Shepard's holographic fights for the betting amusement of the crew?"

"Oh, ha, ha. C'mon. I thought that Shepard told Grunt it was ok-"

"No you did not, Jeff," EDI piped up. "I specifically told you she would not approve."

"Hey, EDI, later we're going to discuss things like 'secrets' and 'discretion' and 'private conversations not involving AIs'," Joker retorted. Kelly laughed, lightly patting him on the shoulder as she straightened and headed back toward the CIC.

"You are too cute, Jeff," she stated as she went.

Joker watched her go, craning around in his seat a bit as he did, before facing forward once more, a silly grin on his face.

"You are blushing, Joker," EDI pointed out.

"Oh, hush you!"

* * *

><p>"Forgive me for staring. Do you mind if I sit?"<p>

Sydney was seated in the mess, the remains of dinner spread in front of her, nursing a beer. She was not alone, Wilcher and a few of the other crewmen having gravitated their direction. At the voice coming from her right, she turned her head and lifted a brow at the drell man standing there. She had noticed him a few minutes before, lingering at the entrance of the mess and staring at her with an unblinking intensity.

"No, go right ahead," she said, gesturing at the empty seat opposite her with the neck of her beer bottle.

"Thank you," he said politely, and sat. "You are…Sydney?"

"Sydney Rasler," she nodded, offering her hand over the table. H e took it, giving it a light squeeze before releasing.

"I am Thane Krios."

"So, Thane," Sydney smiled. "Why exactly is it you were staring?"

"A couple of reasons," he told her, then gestured at her arm. "I was intrigued by the artwork on your skin. I had heard humans indulged in such practices but I had not yet seen it. It is very intricate."

"Oh, thanks." She turned her arm a little, regarding her tattoos.

"You are welcome. I hear Jack has similar designs, but she rarely comes up from the cargo hold. I have not yet met her."

"Jack…she's that super-biotic, isn't she?"

"Yes. Her past is…troubled. I think she prefers her own company."

"Hmm," Sydney nodded, then took another sip of her beer. "So, you said you were staring for a couple of reasons. What was the other one?"

"I believe I have seen you before," he stated honestly. "We have never spoken but…I recall your face."

She knit her brows, squinting at him a little. "I…don't remember you."

"It…was on Liberson," he told her. "It would have been about five years ago-"

Sydney's eyes suddenly went wide and she stood up, abruptly enough to knock her chair over with a loud bang. Instantly all eyes were on them, and Wilcher had his hand on his pistol, half rising before he blinked at her in confusion.

"Syd?"

"The sniper on the hill," Sydney hissed.

"Yes," Thane admitted.

"You killed Blumenthal!"

"As I was hired," he said evenly. "You were very talented. Not many could have tracked me through three kilometers of jungle but I barely eluded you."

In a heartbeat the blonde had her sidearm in her hand and aimed at the drell's forehead. Though her target made no move, a few startled cries punctuated several of the _Normandy_ crew reaching for their own weapons, leaping from their seats.

"Whoa, _hey_!" Wilcher barked, grasping her shoulder. Sydney's look was full of murder, but she did not pull the trigger. After a tense moment, she pulled the pistol back up.

"If we were not on my friend's ship, if you were not part of her crew, you'd be _dead_ drell," she snarled.

"I understand," Thane said calmly. He got to his feet slowly, regarding her. "For what it is worth, I was simply an instrument used by others to achieve their goals. The hatred toward your friend belonged to others, I was simply the means of their wrath. However, I am sorry for the pain that it caused you."

"I don't want to hear your damn _excuses_," she threatened.

"Understood. I will remain in my quarters during the duration of your stay aboard the ship. I do not wish to cause you discomfort."

He inclined his head again calmly, his polite reserve never once broken, before he turned and strode out of the mess.

Tugging away from Wilcher, Sydney holstered her pistol and walked off toward Armament, more than a dozen eyes watching her go…including a pair by the infirmary door.

"Wilch? What just happened?" Shepard asked, drawing the big ex-marine's attention.

"Seems your drell crewman offed one of Syd's friends a few years back," he told her. "He just up and confessed. She nearly holed him right then and there."

Shepard frowned. "Blumenthal," she whispered with sudden understanding. Turning, still slightly unsteady she headed toward Armament and followed Sydney into the forward batteries. Normally Garrus's haunt, the turian was not present. Sydney had her hands planted on the equipment bank, eyes shut and jaw clenched as she hung her head.

"What is that fucker doing aboard your ship, Del?" she asked, not having to look around to know who had just entered.

"Drell don't think the way we do," Shepard murmured, shifting her arm in its sling as she stood nearby, ducking her head a little to see her friend's face. "He sees himself as an instrument directed by others, no more at fault than a gun is when it is aimed and fired."

"That's a bullshit excuse and you know it!"

"Is it?" Shepard asked. "We're marines, Sydney. Maybe not officially at the moment but they can't dig that out of you, can't remove it once it's there. Say we were ordered to take out a hidden bunker only once we had done so, we realized it was nothing more than a refugee hide-out full of innocents. Would that be our fault? Intels? The Brass? Who do you blame?"

"It's not the same thing! He put those cross-hairs on Carl's skull, Shepard. He knew exactly what he was doing and why? For _money_? Because Carl stepped on some fucking batarian's toes that had more credits than brains and earned himself a death sentence?"

"Thane did not have to tell you," Shepard pointed out.

"Oh, well _that_ makes it all better, his _honesty_," Sydney snarled, then straightened. "You know what? I'm going back to the Folly for a while. Wilcher will take me and be back here with the ship in time to get Liara home to Hagalaz. I can't…I _can't_ be on this ship with him here, or _one_ of us is going to die."

As she turned and headed for the door Shepard straightened. "Sydney…"

"It's…it's fine, Shep, I just…I can't be here," she mumbled, making a helpless gesture as she walked away.

Shepard sighed, hanging her head and scrubbing the fingers of her good hand through her hair. "Fuck," she whispered.

She didn't know what Carl Blumenthal had really done to earn that batarian ass Kivik's wrath. Carl was a bit too fond of gambling and had a loose tongue. He might have gotten in debt with Kivik and been unable to pay. Whatever the reason, he'd been gunned down while working with Syd on a simple recon mission. Rasler had chased the assassin through three kilometers of dense, untracked jungle before he managed to escape in a small launch pod. It had more or less marked the end of her career with the Alliance marines. Less than a year later she was gone, vanished completely off the grid for nearly eighteen months before reappearing and starting work as a corsair. She had never told Shepard where she had been or what she'd been doing during that year, and honestly…Del was almost afraid to ask.


	41. Chapter 41

A/N: My deepest apologies. I was down with the creepy crawly plague from Saturday through Monday, and for all of yesterday my work computer was on the fritz and I was unable to write. However, it is now back up…and we are back in action. That said, this is a rather short chapter. Too long away and my rusty brain is struggling to get back into the groove. Normal chapter tomorrow.

* * *

><p>"What are we going to do about Thane?" Jacob asked as Shepard turned away from the galaxy map. Sydney and Wilcher had just departed, Shepard watching the little blip that was their ship heading away from the <em>Normandy<em> and toward Folsberg.

Glancing up at the man she had, early on, nicknamed Boy Scout, Shepard's already brooding brows knit tighter. "What do you mean?"

"Shepard, the man is a murderer-" Jacob began, only to halt as she held her hand up, then gestured sharply toward the armory.

"Let's discuss this in private," she said, her tone anything but suggestion. Following the man within, once they were alone she straightened.

"All right, lay it on me."

"He's a murderer."

"He's an assassin. We knew that when we signed him on."

"This is different, Shepard. Rasler is your friend. That man gunned someone down in front of her, in cold blood…don't you care about that?"

"I do," she replied. "I also care about second chances, Taylor."

"Commander, honestly…does he deserve a second chance?"

"Did I?" Shepard demanded.

"You're different. You're a hero, saved lives. You never kill unnecessarily-"

Stepping forward, the still bruised and battered commander narrowed her eyes as she glared into his. "You don't know me that well, Jacob," she said. "You were a marine, just like I was. We were both trained to be killers-"

"C'mon, Shep…you know that's not the same thing. We were trained by the military to protect our people, innocent civilians-"

"And the only military training that counts is human? The Hanar Illuminated Primacy trained Thane…that's not the same?"

"He wasn't trained as a soldier, he was trained as an assassin."

"And the Alliance doesn't train assassins? _Cerberus_ doesn't?"

"I can't believe you're defending him!"

"I'm not defending what he did, what he was asked to do," Shepard replied, "but the man is dying, Jacob. He's trying to make up for his past, and like anyone he deserves a chance to make a goddamn difference. I'm _not_ going to throw him off the ship because of a mistake he made, years ago. If you think he should go then _I_ should go too. Or do you think my hands are clean?"

"It's _not_ the same thing-"

"Keep telling yourself that, Boy Scout. I don't care if you agree, or if you like him. Thane stays on this crew. Now, if you don't mind, I have a splitting fucking headache."

"Yes, ma'am," Jacob frowned, then saluted her. Tossing off a reply with her good arm, the snap of the motion all irritation, she turned on her heel and strode back out to the CIC.

* * *

><p>"Fast as anything, she lays him out with this beautiful right hook and as he hits the ground, she gets to her feet and she says, no lie…"<em>I'm Commander <em>_**fucking**__ Shepard_!"

Liara blinked over at Kasumi, bottle hovering over the edge of the glass just on the cusp of pouring. The thief was giggling like a school girl. Shaking her head, Liara couldn't help the smile as she looked back down, pouring the drink.

"That sounds like her," she said. "I still cannot believe you got her into a dress and heels."

"She was smokin' too," Kasumi agreed, taking a sip of her own drink as she leaned on the tiny bar. Not lowering the glass she cocked one finger out, pointing at the asari. "And in the limo on the way over to the house, she talked about nothing but finding you."

Liara's blue eyes lifted almost bashfully to Kasumi's, the human woman nodding.

"It's true. Wouldn't shut up about you. Went on and on. I finally agreed to help search for you out of sheer desperation. I was afraid she'd faint right there in the car."

She smirked, giving a wink, and Liara giggled. "I doubt it went quite like that."

"No, she was very sweet about it. And after you were shot-"

"You do not have to convince me that she cares about me," Liara interrupted, before her voice softened. "I know that she does. It is just…"

"I know," Kasumi murmured in reply. "Road goes both ways. I just think she's still not used to that, you know? Having someone care about her so much…it's foreign territory to her. Jumping into a pit to fist-fight a krogan, now _that_ is every day."

Reaching out the thief picked up the bottle and topped off her own glass before lifting it up. "Here's to Shepard, the craziest, bravest and most irritatingly psychotic human being both of us will ever have the pleasure to know."

Liara smirked, shaking her head before lifting her own glass. "To Shepard."

* * *

><p>Shepard stepped into her quarters, crossing from the office space down into the living, plucking up a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Grimacing a little as she spun the cap off she took a swig directly from the neck, shaking her head.<p>

Booze was probably not the best combination while she was still on painkillers, though those did seem to be wearing off. Her head ached, as did her shoulder. Every one of her bruises throbbed in a way that made it seem as if Wrex's ghost was still doing his best to beat her senseless. Reluctantly setting the bottle down after a second, smaller swig she flopped back on the bed, then grimaced in regret as the motion created more pain than it solved. As it faded down again she sighed.

She heard a faint tapping near the bed and half sat, leaning over to open the tube for Rat's habitat. The rodent hurried out, crossing over onto Shepard's chest, sniffing at her chin.

"At least someone still likes me," Shepard murmured, scratching the rodent's back before reaching for her console remote. Switching on some Flatwood she let the remote drop, closing her eyes as she listened to the music, softly trailing her fingers over Rat's back.

Liara entered the room a moment later, standing at the partition between office and living space, watching the woman a moment as the familiar music moved over her.

The commander had to hear her as she stepped down and moved over to the bedside, yet she didn't turn her head or open her eyes until Liara had drawn even. "Hey, you," she murmured.

"Shepard, you seem to have wildlife making a nest on your shirt," Liara informed her. Shepard cocked that lopsided grin the asari loved so much, and scooped Rat up, maneuvering herself into a sit.

"Li, this is Rat. Rat, this is Li."

"I thought 'rat' was what this species was called."

"It is."

"…and you named her Rat?"

"So, I'm not great with naming," Shepard snorted, leaning over to deposit Rat back into her tunnel, snapping it shut. "Most of the time I just point at shit and grunt."

Liara sat down on the edge of the bed. Despite her other feelings, she couldn't help a small twinge of adoring amusement. Shepard looked like a petulant child about to be punished, the way she looked down at her lap, the slightest hint of a pout on her face.

"Will Sydney be all right?" Liara asked. "She looked quite upset, and Wilcher…he told me some of what occurred, but it was very brief."

Shepard blew out a breath, then shook her head. "I don't know. I know that when Blumenthal died it hit her hard. Kid was a hothead, reckless. Half the time Sydney couldn't even stand him."

"Hotheaded and reckless…" Liara murmured. Shepard gave her a level look.

"Not like I was. At least I wasn't a fucking moron about it, most of the time. And I only risked myself. I didn't put other people in danger. You _never_ risk your goddamn team."

She shook her head, brushing some hair back from her forehead. " He was out of hand, selfish…liked to party, would show up on duty drunk sometimes…thought he was shit out by God himself. It's no great big surprise he ended up getting himself in a hole, pissing someone off enough they'd want to take him out. It's just unfortunate Thane was the one to carry out the order."

"When I saw Sydney's face, I thought perhaps he was…a very close friend," Liara ventured.

"Pth, no," Shepard said. "It's just that he was a kid, you know? Nineteen. She was responsible for him. He was a fuckwad but he still had family. Parents, cousins, a younger brother…it was her job to get him home safely and instead she watched his life end on a routine recon mission on a safe goddamn colony planet."

Liara nodded sadly. "I see."

Shepard wiped her palm over her mouth before she looked at the woman seated beside her. "Look, Li…I really am sorry. Not about going to help Mordin with his friend or facing that maw with Grunt but…I shouldn't have fought Wrex like that."

"No, you should not have," Liara told her. "Shepard, I know that what you must do is dangerous…that is exactly the point. You are too important to risk yourself for such foolish things. To this galaxy, and to me."

"I know…" Shepard murmured softly.

Liara reached out, the tips of her pale blue fingers lightly tracing over Shepard's forehead, stirring thin locks of her black hair. "I cannot live without you," she whispered. "I know…I _tried_."

Reaching out with her good arm, Shepard sat up and hugged the asari close, ignoring the way it made her healing arm ache. After a moment, Liara's arms wound around her, gripping tightly.

* * *

><p>The Folly, as it was affectionately known, was noted on star charts and navigation maps as 'orbital body 27322 ident <em>Folsberg<em>'…or just Folsberg for short. A rocky moon orbiting a gas giant, Folsberg had nothing in the way of usable resources, strategic location, or even aesthetics. Just slightly larger than Earth's moon it was ten times less valuable…which is why Sydney had gotten it so cheap.

Now, Folsberg was home base to Thanatos, a sprawling underground complex and ship dry-dock betrayed on the surface only by access hatches and observation/weapons turrets. As the _Pale Horse_ entered orbit, a shuttle appeared from its hatchway and ferried down to the uninteresting, gray surface…disappearing into a gaping, artificial maw as landing bay doors strewn with dust and rock slowly parted.

As soon as Rasler stepped off-board the shuttle lifted again to return to the ship. The trip had cooled a lot of the blonde's immediate frustration and temper but she had in no-wise forgotten the conversation with Thane...of being face to face with Carl's killer.

A man was waiting for her at the exit of the landing bay. He had a small pack riding high on his shoulder, a pair of almost invisible clear tubes emerging from it. One sank into his forearm. The other looped over an ear and into his right nostril. His face was gaunt and pale but handsome enough, a face built for smiling under a thick shock of black hair.

He was not, however, currently smiling…concern instead showing in his eyes. "I have a bottle of Turkey waiting in the rec-room," he told her. "And I am here if you feel the need to punch things."

"Not going to hit you, Conroy," Sydney snorted as they wended their way through half-empty halls. Half-empty because a good portion of her crew were on Hagalaz. "Turkey sounds good though. We get those shipment manifests yet? The deck boys know what we're in for?"

"We have some," he nodded. "Should get the first shipment in by Friday. No schematics as of yet, save for that cannon. That is a serious wicked gun, by the way."

"Shepard still hasn't approved the armor and shielding upgrades yet. She wants to pow-wow with her crew, get their suggestions. Tell the monkeys to start on those guns as soon as we have the resources."

"You sticking around a while or are you planning to head back to Hagalaz?"

"Don't know what the fuck I'm going to do yet."

"Touchy…don't know why, can't be my charm, that never fails-"

"Conroy," she warned, piercing him with a look. He smiled like a cat that had gotten into the cream.

"Navis is here."

Sydney stared at him a moment, before her jaw went tight. Stepping past him she strode into the rec-room, swiftly catching sight of her prey as the asari woman half turned, lifting a brow in her direction. She was speaking with one of the engineers, dressed in a soft black velvet jacket trimmed with gold and an elegantly cut pair of trousers over a pair of boots that probably cost a year's credits for any of Sydney's men.

The blonde's duffle hit the ground with a bang as she snatched her pistol out of its holster, muscles cording as she aimed it directly at the asari woman. Almost in the same motion the asari drew her own side arm, the motion as graceful as water as she aimed it toward Sydney.

"You have a lot of fucking nerve showing your face around here," the blonde human shot.

"I see you still compensate for your lack of skill, tact, and personal hygiene by covering yourself in ugly tattoos and spouting reprehensible language."

"Oh, _reprehensible_…did you hurt your poor little brain on that big long word?" Sydney demanded. The asari stalked forward, her aim never wavering. Sydney inclined her head in warning, fingers white-knuckled on the butt of her pistol.

"At least I am not an unwashed, uncouth, weakling little human," the asari retorted hotly.

Sydney's eyes sparked. "Who you callin' 'unwashed'," she snarled. "Shoot me, Navis. I _dare_ you."

"If you lovely ladies are done I'd like to point out that you'd be _far_ more convincing if you took your safeties off first," Conroy pointed out, folding his arms with a smirk.

Sydney's smile was the first to crack. "Are you kidding? Butterfingers here might actually have _shot_ me if she'd done that."

"Blah blah," the asari grinned, shipping her pistol as the blonde human lowered hers, stepping forward and hugging her tightly. Sydney clapped her on the back with the first genuine laugh she'd uttered since Thane had sat down opposite her.

"What was that about my hygiene?" she asked as her friend released her.

"_Really_?" the other woman smirked. "And who said I had a 'poor little brain?'"

Sydney smiled and shook her head. "I'm glad you're here, Deeds."

Seeing the faint downturn of Sydney's eyelashes, the slump to her shoulders, Deirdre Navis pursed her lips ever so slightly. "What is it?" she asked seriously. "What's the matter?"

"It's…a long story, my friend. And I need a drink before it starts coming out."

* * *

><p>It was amazing how quickly Liara adapted to being on the <em>Normandy<em> again. Though it was not quite the original, the feel was the same. With Joker, Garrus, Chakwas and Tali there it almost felt like home again.

There were other differences as well, of course. She stayed in Shepard's quarters in the Nest instead of on a cot in the lab, though the first night she utterly refused to sleep in the bed…and refused to allow Shepard to sleep on the sofa. The commander had to heal and Liara brooked no argument. Even so, she was unsurprised to wake in the morning to find that Shepard had removed the cover from the bed in the middle of the night, draping it over her as she slept and leaving only a sheet for herself.

That afternoon Chakwas had determined the bone weave was solid enough to take off the sling and though Liara wanted to remain angry with Del for what she'd done…they had suffered too much for one another and spent far too long apart for her to hold to her temper for long. That night was most certainly _not_ spent upon the sofa…for either of them.

Liara was almost dreading returning to Hagalaz, mentally counting down the final hours until Wilcher would arrive to ferry her back to the storm-riding ship. She knew that it was the best way to help Shepard, that the Broker's information was beyond valuable in the effort against the Collectors, but she could only think about how she was leaving her real home…calculating the impossible miles that would be between the two of them once again.

They were having lunch down in the mess, Tali, Garrus, Chakwas, Daniels, Kasumi, Liara and Shepard, when Miranda suddenly strode out of her office with a set look that Shepard had long learned to recognize meant trouble. Setting down her fork, she wiped her mouth with her napkin.

"Lawson?"

"Shepard, we have a problem," the XO stated, passing her a data pad even as she explained. "Another Cerberus operation, Project Overlord, has suddenly gone dark. We have lost all communication. They are only two hours from our current position."

Shepard frowned at the info on the data pad. "You realize we're rendezvousing with Wilcher in four hours time? That we have an incredible amount of work and preparation in front of us and a short amount of time to do it in? We can't go running off every time Cerberus calls, I made that clear from the beginning. Does this project have _anything_ to do with the Collectors? Anything at all?"

"No," Miranda replied. "I am not privy to the specifics of other projects, Shepard, so I cannot tell you exactly _what_ their goals are. What I _can_ tell you, however, is that there are three hundred men and women stationed at that project. Scientists, mathematicians, engineers…they're not soldiers, Shepard, and they only have a few security mechs for protection."

Shepard felt her gut tighten. Miranda knew exactly what buttons to push, as always. Three hundred civvies that could be in trouble…she knew that Shepard would see that before she would see helping 'Cerberus'.

"Where's the project located?" she said at last.

"Aite," Miranda replied instantly. "As I said, we can make it there in two hours."

"We can rendezvous with Wilcher later at these coordinates," Liara spoke up from beside her, laying her hand on Shepard's arm. "Those lives far outweigh my need to go home."

Shepard looked at her, then nodded reluctantly, handing the data pad back to Miranda. "Tell Joker to get us on course. Have EDI relay the message to Wilcher that we will be a bit later than planned and can return Liara to Hagalaz ourselves if need be. And see if Mr. Illusive won't loosen up his asshole a bit and actually give us some idea of what they were working on. You know, so we're not walking in _completely _blind?"

"Of course, Shepard," Miranda replied.

"Commander, I want to give you one last exam before you go running into battle again," Chakwas piped in. "Not that I'll be able to stop you but at least you'll have a better idea of what you'll be able to endure."

Shepard nodded, then looked at Liara. "You have full run of the ship while we're gone, of course. I have a couple of vids up in my quarters-"

"I will be going with you," Liara stated as she neatly folded her napkin. Shepard frowned.

"The hell you will be!"

"Shepard, I may have forgiven you but I am still angry," Liara warned her. "As much as I dislike it I have to come to terms with the fact that I cannot protect you, not even from yourself. You must come to accept the same about me. I cannot let you take all of the risks, and I refuse to sit up here watching vids while you and your crew are potentially risking your lives for civilians. I will be going with you, and that is the end of our discussion."

Laying the napkin perfectly over her empty tray she rose and went to dispose of it. Shepard stared after her, her mouth only slamming shut when she heard Kasumi's muffled giggle.

"Laugh it up, Goto," she scowled. "You _just_ volunteered to go with us. Tali, you too. I want you both suited up and prepped the moment we hit orbit, dong ma?"


	42. Chapter 42

"_Hello? Hello, can anyone hear me?"_

Glimmering gray walls were scorched black, splashed with red. A decorative plant had been knocked over, its large vase broken on the ground, rich brown dirt fanning over polished tile. Nearby, a man stared at the ceiling with glazed, unseeing eyes, all his cares lost in the crimson puddle beneath him.

"_Hello? Is anyone there? I detected a landing craft! Can anyone hear me?"_

A woman sat slumped beneath a desk. Wood had been pitted around her, dark holes forming a tattoo in halo about her head, glimmering with blood and what remained of her brain. Her nicely manicured nails shimmered in the fluorescent lights.

"_Hello? Please, if anyone can hear me…respond! Please respond!"_

A shadow fell over the limp woman's face. A gloved hand reached out, gingerly touching her forehead, eyes narrowing behind a faceplate as they considered the fatal wound, before they lifted to the flashing console nearby. Static rippled over its surface, but a man's face could almost be seen.

As Shepard straightened, Tali headed over to the console, her omni-tool already lighting. "I can stabilize the image, just one moment," she said. A few taps to her tool and the static cleared, revealing an older man's drawn and haggard gaze.

"_Oh, thank heavens,"_ he gasped. _"Yes, I can see you now."_

Carefully stepping around the dead woman's legs, Shepard strode over to Tali's side, Liara and Kasumi trailing behind. "My name is Commander Shepard," she stated. "What's the situation?"

"_I am Gavin Archer. There is no time to explain. This facility was developing a specialized AI and it has gone rogue. It has taken over nearly all our systems including our mechs. Indications are it is going to attempt to use our communications dish to upload itself off-world via our satellite. You must retract the dish immediately. The controls are in the office, just down the corridor to the west. Please, hurry!"_

"Shit," Shepard growled, already turning and heading for the corridor. _Fucking Cerberus. Leave it to them to meddle with things they shouldn't be and turn it all into one giant clusterfuck._

Boot steps rumbled through the corridor as the four women hurried to the office, Shepard quickly clearing the room before stepping aside and letting Tali past. The quarian hurried to the controls and activated them.

The office bore a set of windows. Through them they could see the green mountainside, the afternoon sun painting it with a gold patina, shadowed only by the enormous communications dish. A small flock of birds resting on its struts suddenly lifted into the sky, startled by the motion of the dish as it slowly started to retract into the mountain.

Suddenly Tali startled, hands jerking back from the console as every monitor lit up in a brilliant green. A high-pitched shrieking sound filled the air, each woman clapping hands to the sides of their helmet against it.

Outside the window the dish jolted to a halt, the consoles brightening even as the screech grew louder. Shepard could feel it resonating through her skull, setting her very teeth on edge. For a moment, in the flashes of green on the monitors, she thought she could make out a face…but it was gone in the next breath.

With a bang, the consoles all fell black, the HI flickering and then snuffing out. The sound stopped as well, and Shepard lowered her hands to see a thin puff of smoke rising from the back of the machinery.

"Oh, Keelah…" Tali shook her head, then crouched, fumbling for the access panel. As she tore it open, black smoke billowed from ruined innards, and she waved a hand, withdrawing. "It's totally fried. The AI overloaded its power couplings. The dish is jammed. It will never retract now."

"Dish that big there has to be a way to get aboard," Shepard considered, shaking her head and stretching her jaw in an attempt to ease her aching ears. "If we can take out the antenna directly on the dish the AI won't be able to upload."

Liara leaned in close to the windows, scanning the exterior landscape. "I see a tram-line, Shepard. The station doesn't seem to be too far from here."

"Let's move. Tali, I want you to cut our direct communication to the _Normandy_. Everyone, isolate your omni-tools. I want no chance of that AI infecting the ship or accessing our tools via wireless."

She powered up her own omni-tool, isolating it not to accept any external signal as she spoke. The _Normandy_ would be slightly alarmed when communications went down but hopefully Miranda had gotten word from the Illusive Man as to the true nature of this project. If she did, and realized there was the possibility an AI had gone rogue she would put two and two together.

Kasumi vanished under her cloak as she hurried ahead, taking her position as scout and feeling out the route and lay of the land. The other three followed, weapons-ready as they hurried toward the tram station, passing by the occasional dead civilian. With the sight of each one, Shepard's jaw tightened, her resolve firmed, and her spirit felt grimmer.

_Blind men and women on an idealistic crusade after fool's gold_, she thought. If she needed any more reason to hate the Illusive Man and Cerberus before, she certainly didn't now.

Her tension was not just related to the dead, or to their rush toward the dish to stop the AI from uploading off-world. They had not seen a single mech since entering the facility. The project had plenty of them and it stood to reason if an AI had gone rogue and was powerful enough to overload that console, then it most certainly had used the mechs themselves to kill the civilians. So where were they now? Why were they not hip-deep in the fuckers?

They found the tram, and Tali did a quick scan of its still active systems. "Its computer system is simple and isolated from the rest of the complex. It looks clean, Shepard. I've locked it down from any possible wireless interference. We should have a straight shot to that dish."

Shepard clapped her on the shoulder, then drew off her helmet. Running the back of her wrist over her forehead she peered out the front windscreen at the dish in the distance, unconsciously adjusting her stance as the tram jolted into motion and began to slide forward.

"What are you thinking?" Liara asked softly, having shed her own helmet as she came to stand by Del.

"It's going to take a lot of ordinance to bring down that antenna," Shepard told her. "And for all that carnage we saw back there…did you see a single fucking mech? Because I didn't."

"No," Liara agreed. "I wonder where they have gone?"

Shepard made a faint humming noise, never looking away from the dish. "My luck says we'll run into a huge fucking nest of them at some point."

"Ever the optimist," Liara teased gently.

"Hey, I _always_ believe the best about the universe," Shepard told her with a dry smirk. "The universe just goes out of its goddamn way to prove me wrong."

The looming shadow of the dish slowly fell over them, then consumed them as the tram slid into its station at its base. As the doors opened, they could hear a pleasantly female voice speaking.

"_Satellite uplink window will soon open. Please clear all data information through your department supervisor."_

The four women came out of the tram in almost perfect sync, weapons up and expertly scanning the station. More dead bodies, a few damaged consoles. Kasumi vanished to scout ahead and almost immediately returned, her face pale as the cloak faded away. She said one word that instantly chilled their blood.

"Geth."

"How many?" Shepard asked.

"Dozens, maybe more. They're all over the main control center. I don't think we can fight through them all in time to shut down the antenna signal from within."

"How did the geth get here?" Tali asked, the scowl on her face clear in her voice. Shepard's brows knit as she thought quickly.

"The control room was a long shot anyway. What we can't do digitally we'll have to do physically. That antenna is held up by supports joining it to the main reflector. We'll head outside, take them out if we can. If the geth follow us they'll at least be exposed along an open field."

"So will _we_, Shep," Kasumi pointed out.

"That's where our barriers and Liara's biotics come in," Shepard told her. "Outside still has more tactical advantage than running into a whole nest of them."

"Exterior dish access is through this hatchway," Liara indicated. Shepard made sure her helmet was securely locked down.

"Mag-locks, lowest strength," Shepard ordered. "You don't want to be tripped up but the winds out here are going to be harsh…I don't want anyone getting blown off the side of the mountain."

Locks set, Liara eased open the hatchway, barely managing to retain hold of the door as that very wind suddenly grabbed it and threatened to rip it away. Edging out past her, rifle to her shoulder, Shepard scanned the exterior slope of the dish through the scope.

"Clear," she said. "First connection point looks like it's about nine o'clock."

Waving Tali and Kasumi ahead Shepard turned as she walked out onto the metal surface, covering Liara as she closed the hatch, then gripped the lock-wheel. Her hands sparked to life with blue fire, and she grit her teeth, warping the hatch and its wheel and sealing it shut.

Liara headed up the dish at a trot, drawing her side arm as she pursued Tali and Kasumi. Shepard brought up the rear, continuously scanning for any hostiles. By the time she got to the strut connection Tali was already straightening from her assessment of it.

"The yield of two grenades should tear it free," she told Shepard. The commander unhooked one from her belt, tossing it over.

"Set them for thirty seconds," she ordered. "We can be halfway to the next strut before it blows and gives us away."

Tali and Kasumi quickly set the grenades, the quarian gesturing quickly the moment the final one was locked. "That's it, timer's on."

All four immediately headed around the rim of the dish toward the second strut. Spotting another hatchway Shepard switched her scope that direction, calling over to Liara. "Cover those two!"

They were halfway to the second strut when the first one blew. A belch of flame spread out, shedding black smoke and shards of metal, the rumble of the detonation shaking the dish beneath their feet a breath later. Not three seconds later the hatch Shepard had covered blew open and geth filled her scope.

"Move!" she barked at the others, even as she took the first synth down. As his face-lights exploded she fixed on the one right behind it and eliminated that one as well.

Hearing gunshots she checked her HUD without turning her head, saw more hostile markers emerging from a third hatch on the other side. Dropping another geth she swung her rifle around and broke into a run, knocking down two on the fly even as Liara's biotics lit up in a flare of blue ice.

A geth trooper squealed as it sailed up into the air, tumbling almost gracefully over the edge of the dish. Shepard reached the biotic's side, dropping three more synths as they rumbled over the dish from the first hatchway. Bullets sparked off the metal curve and then flared against her shields.

"Tali!"

"Set! Fifteen seconds!"

The four women broke into a run toward the final strut, Liara throwing up a barrier between them and the swiftly multiplying synthetics. The second strut went up and this time the rumble that passed through the dish was anything but subtle. The structure bucked momentarily, faltering their steps. Shepard slowed enough to fall out of scope of the barrier and instantly her shields were hit by a barrage of fire from the geth.

Dropping four of them she reached the final strut shortly after the other three.

"I only have one left, I need one more grenade!" Tali called. Shepard yanked one off her belt and tossed it to Kasumi, who then tossed it to Tali.

"Can you push them back?" Shepard called to Liara. The asari flamed with energy, drawing in a massive wave before sending it sailing down the dish toward the enemy.

Geth were thrown flying, smashed back into the center structure even as Tali shouted.

"Set!"

"Get out of range," Shepard barked, covering their retreat as they rushed away from the strut and further up the dish.

Just outside of the blast range Shepard slowed, glancing back just as the explosives released, tearing the strut loose of its support. The dish rippled like waves in an ocean and she half-stumbled, only to steady as her arm was caught.

Smoke billowed toward the sky as the vibrations faded away, and Shepard grinned at Liara. "Well, that was easy," she quipped.

_{…can you read me?}_

"This is Shepard, Archer. Go ahead."

_{You've done it, the connection to the satellite has been lost. I will be to your position momentarily.}_

"Understood. Shepard-"

"Goddess! _Look out_!"

Shepard hit the dish hard as Liara tackled her. Barely had she struck it, however, than it seemed to shove her back upward again. Rising at least a foot into the air she then slammed back down, her very bones vibrating as she felt herself start to slide.

Digging in her boots she stopped herself, staring at where she had been standing.

A slab of metal debris at least a ton in weight had slammed to the ground just where she had been moments ago. Pushing herself up, grabbing hold of Liara, she looked upward.

The struts giving way had twisted and eventually torn the main antenna beyond the scope of its integrity. As she watched, the huge spear of electronics and metal was twisting off its base, ripping free of its connection and sending massive slabs of debris raining down.

The antenna was going to fall, and when it did, this entire dish was going to fall with it.

"You've _got_ to be kidding me…" she gasped, then pushed Liara ahead of her as she barked toward the gaping Kasumi and Tali. "_RUN!_"

They fled for the edge of the dish and the catwalks that linked to the mountainside and facility. There was a good ten foot gap between the two but a full thousand foot drop below them if they fell with that dish.

The ground beneath their feet was bucking and writhing like a living thing, heaving and shaking with every debris impact, every shift of its weight. Tali reached the edge of the dish first and leapt into the air. For a second Shepard knew she was going to fall short and felt her heart nearly stop. Then Tali was wreathed in blue as Liara gave her a biotic shove, boosting her leap just enough to reach the catwalk.

Kasumi was in the air a breath later, Liara flinging a hand forward and all but batting the thief onto the catwalk as well.

Shepard could feel the dish actually folding under her feet as she reached the edge almost shoulder to shoulder with the young asari, both leaping into the air simultaneously. She was unsurprised to feel the tingle along her skin, the warm rush as she was taken up by Liara's energies and lifted higher into the air. In the midst of fear and adrenaline, however, Liara had boosted the pair of them a bit higher than necessary. Shepard found herself staring down at least ten feet at the catwalk even as they started their downward arc. Twisting she caught hold of Liara and turned her back toward the onrushing metal.

She slammed to the catwalk hard enough to bark her air from her lungs, her hard-suit creaking slightly with the force, shielding Liara from the impact with her own body.

Silence fell like a heavy blanket, the only sound her panting breaths as she fought to reclaim her air. Liara was clinging to her, both women too shaken to move immediately. After only seconds, they heard the faint dying impact as the collapsed dish finished its thousand foot fall and came to rest on the distant valley floor.

Still panting a little, Shepard managed a chuckle. "Nice…throw…"

"Nice _catch_," Liara replied. Lifting her head Shepard looked at the asari's eyes through her face plate, then laughed.

Rising, the asari helped Shepard up to her feet. The commander quickly looked over to the quarian and the thief. "You two ok?"

"Can we do that again?" Kasumi asked with a cheeky smile. Shepard gave her a baleful look and a snort.

"Yeah, _no_. How about we _don'_t."

Suddenly grasping the other woman's arm she pulled her out of the way in the same motion she drew her pistol, aiming it at the figure running toward them on the catwalk. Her gun only lowered as she recognized the pale, panting civvie.

"Mr. Archer…"

"Thank goodness," he gasped as he drew to a halt. "You took the dish out just in time. The AI didn't make it to the satellite."

"That's great," Shepard said sarcastically, straightening. "Now how about you fill us in on what the _fuck_ is going on?"

* * *

><p>The office Archer had sequestered himself in was roomy enough for all four of them, but Tali and Kasumi lingered a bit in the door as the distraught civvie sat down. His shaking fingers traced nervously over his face a moment, before he clasped them in his lap.<p>

"This is Project Overlord," he said as Shepard folded her arms. She and Liara had both shed their helmets, and both wore nearly identical expressions carved of pure stone. Dead civvies were bad enough, but they had almost died trying to stop whatever _up_ this project had _fucked_.

He had better have a really _good _fucking excuse for it.

Licking his lips the man continued. "We were developing a new AI protocol, unlike anything anyone's ever seen before. We were hoping to link an AI's neural network to a human mind directly, and in doing so attempt to control the geth from inside their own sphere. We could infiltrate digitally and stop a war before it could even begin."

"Linking a _human mind_ to an AI?" Shepard asked, horrified at the idea.

"And potentially saving billions of lives in doing so," Archer nodded. "With a human mind to control it the AI wouldn't get out of hand-"

"I sense _that_ logic failed," Tali said tersely.

"Yes," he murmured, slumped. "I…I am still not sure what went wrong. You see my brother…my brother David…he volunteered to be linked up to the AI network. All the initial tests showed promise, nothing but positive results but when he was fully integrated I…I don't know _what_ happened. The combined consciousness of David and the AI seemed…it seemed to go mad. The next thing we knew he was taking over the computers and then the mechs, turning them on everyone. I…I barely escaped, locked myself in here. I…I watched on the monitors as the mechs and the geth slaughtered everyone."

"Where'd the geth come from?"

"Not too far from here, at Prometheus…there is a crashed geth ship. All the units inside were in some kind of…of dormant state, a…a type of _hibernation_. We have been using them in our experiments, making sure the AI was compatible with geth systems and software. Every unit that was removed from the ship and transported here for the experiments was infected with the AI program. They came to 'life' almost immediately, but they're not under their own control…their actions are all at Dav…at the AI's will."

"_This_ is what Cerberus does," Shepard growled under her breath. "Listen, I'm not going to waste my energy lecturing you on the ethics of this kind of experimentation…right now I have to mop up the goddamn mess you people made before anyone _else_ dies. Give me the basics I need to _stop_ this AI."

"It can control anything electronic, turn it against you. Consoles, computer systems, weapons systems, mechs, geth…anything that uses _any_ kind of computer program. Right now its goal simply seems to be to kill anything living and get itself off world. If it manages to link to a satellite or some other system off this planet, the results would be catastrophic. It could spread to the extranet, hit every computer system in the galaxy in a single solar day. It would be Armageddon."

"If this thing is controlled by your brother, then why is it attacking?" Liara asked. "Was your brother a violent man?"

"_No_!" Archer gaped. "No, David is…David was the sweetest, most gentle soul you could ever encounter. We were careful, I swear it! We would never risk connecting someone with violent impulses or a malevolent personality up to something so powerful! We were _careful_!"

"Not careful _enough_," Kasumi shook her head.

"If your brother is so gentle then why kill people? Why all this death?"

"I…I honestly don't know. He…he may be in some kind of dream-state, or trance…he may be in a lot of pain and can't understand what is happening. It could all be some…some subconscious defense mechanism."

"Did you try separating him from the AI? Removing the connection physically?" Tali suggested.

"There was no time," he replied. "Only a couple of us got out of the room alive, the mechs attacked so quickly. He's sealed himself in now and the entire complex is on lockdown. The lockdown has to be lifted before anyone can get to him to shut down the program and free him from his connections. The problem is all three department heads have to clear the lockdown from their own consoles…in each of the three main stations. I've already cleared it here at my station, but…everyone else is dead. You'll have to infiltrate the other two stations and clear the lockdown at each station before you can get to Atlas and release David."

"Fan-fucking-_tastic_," Shepard huffed. "What are we looking at?"

"Prometheus station is the crashed geth ship I mentioned earlier. Vulcan station is the geothermal plant about two clicks from here, up the side of the volcano-"

"This is a volcano?" Liara asked, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "_Wonderful_."

"Hey, I _met_ you in a volcano," Shepard smirked a little.

"Even so, I would rather not have to outrun another one," Liara pointed out.

"Give us the coords to the stations and we'll shut down the lockdown. Is there anything else you can tell us that will be of any kind of help?" Shepard asked.

"Just be careful with anything electronic. Trust nothing, not even your own omni-tools if you can avoid it. And…hurry. If David finds another way off-world it is the end of life as we know it."

* * *

><p>Despite Liara's fears, Vulcan station was not very difficult to infiltrate, once they had maneuvered the outside landscape. Dead bodies once more littered the close, dark hallways but only a small handful of mechs made an appearance, and the squad put them down easily enough.<p>

Even so Shepard could tell these were not mechs acting on ordinary programming. Their motions were bizarre, not quite typical…and at times they had bursts of seeming intelligence.

It was the consoles that proved the real distraction. Though they made no move to access any of them, passing any kind of computer or console display invariably resulted in the same green flashes of light and loud, unintelligible screeching that had assaulted them when attempting to lower the dish. It was clear very quickly that these phenomena were following them, and they were starting to give Shepard a _serious_ headache.

When they passed through the final door to the director's office, Shepard's brows knit. A single mech was furiously kicking at the lockdown mechanism, occasionally punctuating its apparent frustration with low-caliber pistol blasts at the same.

Shepard's first shot took its arm off at the shoulder, the mech both startling (if mechs could display anything like startlement) and whirling around to face them. With a giggle, Tali surgically removed its second arm with another shot to the joint, and Shepard grinned.

"Nice one."

Confused, the mech began to run around pointlessly in circles. Shipping her weapon, Shepard strode right past it to the mechanism and lifted the lockdown.

_{Thank God,}_ Archer's voice broke through almost immediately. _{Only one more left. The crashed ship is down in the valley, Commander. Be careful…there were still dozens of dormant geth aboard when we connected David and I cannot promise you they're not all still dormant.}_

"Yeah, I gotcha," Shepard said in irritation. As she strode for the door her pistol snapped out and erased the head of the confused mech. It wobbled to a halt before slowly collapsing, neck joint still spitting feeble sparks.

* * *

><p>The project had a mountain crawler that had been left at Hermes station when the lockdown had been put into effect. Shepard sat at the wheel, scowling a bit as they grumbled along the winding path toward the valley floor.<p>

"Are you all right?" Liara asked softly from shotgun, her slim brows knit.

"This is exactly _why_ I fucking hate Cerberus," Shepard grit. "They always claim such noble motives but try telling that to the families of all these dead civvies! Trying to prevent a war…all they did was slaughter hundreds and not only put _our_ lives in danger but the whole _goddamn galaxy_ if that abomination of an AI makes it off-world! Forwarding the cause of humanity my goddamn _fucking ass_!"

Liara inclined her head slightly, completely nonplussed by Shepard's rage. "I know," she said gently, "but I meant _physically_. Are you in pain?"

"What? No, I'm fine," Shepard sniped.

"The tightness of the flesh around the corners of your eyes and mouth tell me differently," Liara pressed. Shepard shook her head.

"It's just a headache, that's all. That goddamn AI screeching at us from every console, and-"

Almost as if her words had summoned it, the dash display of the mountain crawler suddenly went green and an unearthly, high-pitched shriek filled the vehicle, even as it suddenly lurched forward with a surge of speed.

"_FUCK!_" Shepard gasped, hauling on the wheel as they spun too close to the edge of the winding road and the cliff that fell away just beside it. The crawler turned into a skid and Shepard could feel the rear-wheels churning over empty space a breath before they caught back on to solid ground. The crawler lurched forward again, the unearthly shrieking still filling the air, sending lances of pain stabbing in her temples. Their speed continued to increase out of her control.

_This isn't possible_, Shepard thought frantically. _Tali isolated the crawler's systems, made sure they were scrubbed. The damn thing doesn't even have a goddamn wireless connection…how did the AI get in?_

The steering wheel seemed to be wrestling against her as well…yet another impossibility. The wheel controlled the tires through solid mechanics…the small computer only regulated warning systems, infrared guidance and fuel flow. No AI, no matter how talented, should have been able to control the steering mechanism any more than it could have controlled a rock.

Weaving on the narrow road as Shepard fought for control, they were barreling for another hair-pin turn…and the drop off another cliff. Shepard felt the muscles in her arms actually cramping as she threw all her strength into wrenching the wheel, her foot stomping as hard as possible on the brake though she knew that motion would be completely futile.

A cry of sheer determination growled out from between her lips as she pulled, and the crawler danced its way into another skid, its back end sailing for the cliff's edge as its front chewed its way toward the open downhill road.

"Come on! _Come on_!" Shepard barked. She could feel the crawler sliding backward, its rear tires digging for any traction they could find. That unearthly shriek had reached a pitch that she was certain was making her ears bleed, the green light strobing on the screen so fast it could have induced epileptic fits. Liara was clinging to her seat and the door, braced and wide-eyed as she felt the balance of the crawler shifting further and further backward.

Then the tires caught on something…part of the slope, or a lucky outcropping…and dug in with a roar. The crawler leapt forward with bone-cracking force, catapulting itself completely free of the road and sailing nearly ten feet before it slammed back down. All four women were thrown hard against their restraints as the crawler sped down the dirt path, weaving again before it once more skidded to the side, unable to maintain anything even resembling a straight course. Dirt slid and it tilted…this time to the left. They hit their restraints again as the right tires whirled madly in the air, the balance holding for a fraction of a second before it tipped too far.

The crawler began to roll, tumbling over the edge of the road and down a steep slope, picking up speed as it fell. The sound of crushing metal punctuated a particularly heavy bounce as it struck a boulder and ricocheted into the air, only to careen back down to earth. Within the vehicle the women were held in place only by their harnesses, everything a chaos of motion and noise and that awful shriek. Shepard braced herself to feel that final, deadly sensation of free-fall when the crawler would leave the slope and actually meet a precipice.

_I should have left Liara behind, I should have left her on the ship! Kasumi and Tali…please let them live! Please let them all live!_

The crawler came down with a final shattering squeal of glass and metal. All motion and sound stopped.

There was nothing left but silence.


	43. Chapter 43

The ruined crawler lay in a halo of dirt and dust, drunkenly listing onto its side with its nose jammed against a large boulder. One wheel was still faintly spinning, trickles of rock and gravel disturbed by its violent passage still shifting and settling around it. The driver's door hung open, all but wrenched from its hinges. A form in a dark hard-suit stumbled away from the aperture, weaving drunkenly on the slope, more small rock and dirt slipping in tiny landslides in its wake.

The slope the crawler had tumbled down descended three hundred feet from the roadside before it dropped abruptly off. Beyond this edge, there was a further hundred feet of open air before the valley floor. The crawler had halted just twenty feet short of this precipice. The boulder the crawler had caught up on was the fortune that prevented a far more tragic end to the vehicle and its occupants.

At the bottom of the valley the idyllic green of gently sloping hills and scenic soft riversides were marred by the wreckage of a large geth ship. It was sprawled like a dead insect, tiny prefabs sprouting both around it and along its hull where the project workers had established Prometheus station.

Shepard wobbled, halting momentarily, before lurching forward with another pair of staggering, shuffling steps. More rock spilled around her feet and she half tripped, dropping to her knees just ten feet short of the drop-off.

Face turned toward the distant geth ship the human woman seemed to shudder, arms spread at her sides, a guttural grunt escaping from her mouth before forming into breathless words.

"_Please…make it stop…"_

Her eyes turned upward toward the azure sky, pupils wide and shimmering with emerald fire, before the glow suddenly snuffed out. As if some kind of cord was cut her whole body seemed to slump, her now brown eyes rolling back as she fell limp to the ground.

* * *

><p>Coughing in the dust, Liara felt almost as if they were still tumbling as she blinked open her streaming eyes. Her whole body ached from being thrown around in the restraints, and her lap was covered in glass from the shattered windscreen. Beyond it, she could see part of the slope and the thick tan cloud of dust that was abrading her lungs.<p>

Fingers ventured upward and she winced a little as she touched her tender cheek. Bruised…no more. Despite the aches, she didn't think she was injured.

She coughed again, fumbling for the latch of her restraint. "Shepard…?"

A three fingered hand suddenly reached forward and grabbed her shoulder. "Liara, are you all right?" Tali asked, her voice shaky. Groping her hand up, Liara gripped Tali's a moment.

"I…I am fine, I think," she replied. "Are you hurt?"

"N-no, just shaken…"

"That is one ride I do _not_ want to take again," Kasumi coughed raggedly from the back.

"Are you injured?" Tali asked the thief. There was a faint click and a curse as Kasumi managed to get her restraints off.

"No, I'm fine. Bit of a bump to the head but nothing to worry about."

Liara coughed again, waving away the dust, managing to work her own restraints off. As the clouds of tan started to clear a bit she realized the driver's door was open…and there was no sign of the commander. "Shepard!"

"Keelah! Where did she go?" Tali gasped. Frantically Liara tried opening her door but it was warped far too badly. Ramming her shoulder into it she quickly gave up, scrambling instead over to the open driver's side. Tali and Kasumi forced their doors open as well, all three shaken women scrambling out of the beaten crawler.

Liara only had time to shudder at how close they'd come to actually sliding off the precipice, before she realized the dark shape laying further down the slope was human and not rock. With a gasp she ran as quickly as she could toward the figure, half sliding on the loose rock and dirt as she did so.

"_Del!_"

Shepard did not move or respond, and as Liara reached her side, she could see the woman's eyes were half open. That distant, glazed and fixed gaze immediately brought a memory to mind…a memory of seeing Shepard's burnt and decimated body in that cryo-case. One of her eyes had been saved from the damage of her death and had borne that same fixed, absent fog.

"_No_!" she all but screamed, clasping Shepard's face in her hands before ducking her ear down to her mouth and nose. Rock rattled and tumbled by as Kasumi and Tali reached her side.

"She must have been thrown free-"

"She had her restraints on just like the rest of us!"

"Maybe the clasp failed…Li, is she breathing?"

Li's half sob was the only answer given as the asari pressed her fingers into the sides of Shepard's neck. "Oh, Goddess…" she moaned as she realized there was no pulse either. Grabbing her head again she tilted the woman's head back, gripped her nose, and gave her a breath.

Kasumi sat back on her heels, hands over her mouth and eyes glossing as she watched. Liara planted her hands over Shepard's chest before she realized she could not give compressions with the chest-plate of the hard-suit in the way. She began to fumble for the clasps, the thief swiftly reaching out to help her as Tali lit up her omni-tool. Her fingers were shaking as she quickly worked, and as Kasumi pulled the breast-plate open and Liara began to plant her hands, the quarian knelt down.

"Wait, let me try this," she said, brushing Liara's hands back and then aiming the omni-tool at Shepard's chest, directly at the heart and just above the hem of her tank top.

A short, directed pulse of electricity flared from the end of the tool, the holographic display immediately flickering and dying as most of its power was drained. Shepard's skin reddened in a swath and her entire body jolted, spasming for a second before falling limp again.

Liara pressed her fingers into her neck, then shook her head before bending and giving her another breath. Tears dripped unnoticed from her eyes to land on Shepard's cheeks, sliding softly away into the dirt.

Tali reset her omni-tool. "I only have enough juice for one more," she said, then re-aimed it at the same spot. Liara drew back and another pulse of electricity flashed, the omni-tool immediately dying. The burn on her chest grew worse and Shepard spasmed again before falling limp.

Shaking, Liara's fingers once more pressed into her neck. A frown creased her brow and her hand shifted, pressing directly to her chest before she lay her ear down as well, listening.

The softest throb could be heard, slowly growing stronger. The asari let out a cry of relief. "I can hear it…her heart is beating again…"

Both Kasumi and Tali let out their breath as Shepard's face wrinkled a little. She faintly coughed, head turning. Liara pressed her palms to the human woman's cheeks as brown eyes came back into focus, blinking in confusion.

"…_the fuck_?" she rasped and coughed again. Liara lost the struggle, tears falling freely as she gathered the woman up and hugged her with a trembling sob.

* * *

><p>Tali slipped the latch of the harness into its lock, making sure it was fastened before she hauled on it as hard as she was able. Nothing happened. Even throwing her full weight against it did not cause the fasten to so much as slip, let alone come undone. Shaking her head, she looked at Kasumi, then paced over to the boulder where Shepard and Liara were.<p>

The commander was sitting against the rock, her breastplate still hanging open as Liara carefully dabbed the burn with medi-gel.

"I don't think that you were thrown," Tali said to her as she folded her arms. "Granted with your hard-suit on you weigh a bit more than I do but I couldn't get the lock to even budge."

"Not to mention you're not wounded beyond a bruise or two," Kasumi pointed out with a nod. "If you'd tumbled all that way over this loose rock you'd have lacerations, cuts…you'd look like you'd gone over a cheese grater."

"So…what?" Shepard squinted at them. "I…unfastened my restraint, got out of the vehicle, walked down the slope and just…dropped _dead_?"

Liara made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and almost unconsciously Shepard reached down and grasped her hand with a comforting squeeze.

Kasumi shrugged. "Facts are facts, Shep. I can't explain it any more than you can, and you have no injuries even remotely severe enough to-…well, to put you into the state in which we found you."

Shepard scowled, cracking her neck. It was true. Her head still ached but there was no cut, no bump, no sign she'd hit it on anything. Beyond the burn on her chest (which was now numb thanks to the medi-gel) and vague aches from their bone-jarring ride down the hill, she wasn't injured, let alone injured enough to stop both her heart and her breathing.

Liara drew her hands away to repack the remainder of the medi-gel and Shepard got to her feet, swinging her chest-plate closed again and refastening it.

"Tali." She gestured at the young quarian, who stepped forward, then blinked as Shepard pulled her in and hugged her tightly.

"Thank you," the commander murmured. "That was good thinking."

Tali returned the hug with a nod. "You're welcome," she replied with a sniffle. "Keelah, I'm just glad you're ok."

Smiling at her friend as she released her, Shepard cleared her throat. "How long until your omni-tool recharges?"

"Should be usable again in about twenty minutes," she said. "So long as we stay in the sun for that long."

"Good. Why don't you and Kasumi see if you can't scout out a good way back to the road."

"Of course," Tali nodded. As the two women headed away carefully over the slope, Liara took Shepard's arm. Turning toward her, the human woman was completely unsurprised by the tight embrace. She could feel the asari trembling as she hugged her back just as tightly.

Neither woman said anything, just stood and held each other, Liara's fingers gripping the fringe of Shepard's hair as silent tears of relief traced down her cheeks.

* * *

><p>"How did the AI get control of the crawler?" Liara asked as they picked their way over the slope. Tali and Kasumi had found a way down to a lower section of the road. It would take them nearly an hour on foot to reach the valley floor but even if the crawler hadn't been completely demolished, Shepard would never have let her friends get back into it again.<p>

"I don't know," Shepard replied. "Tali scrubbed it which means it was _scrubbed_. It has no wireless connection for the rogue system to infiltrate it that way. What's even more concerning is that it somehow affected the steering…the damn thing was completely mechanical, not linked to the computer system. It doesn't make any goddamn _sense_."

Liara reached out and took her hand, squeezing it tightly as they walked. So many pieces did not fit. Infiltrating the crawler, sabotaging the steering, the odd way Shepard had ended up away from the vehicle with no breath or pulse…that last one still made the asari's blood run cold. She owed Tali _everything_ for saving Shepard's life.

_Goddess, when will we be able to just…__**be**__. When will all this be over and let us both just live in peace? _

* * *

><p>Afternoon slowly made its way toward evening, shadows growing long and the light more golden as they finally reached the valley floor. In the distance, perhaps a mile further on, the wrecked geth ship loomed like a portent of waiting doom.<p>

Since the beginning of time, every human being who had ever sailed…be it on the seas and waters of Earth itself or within the endless expanses of space…knew one simple fact. Ships had lives, _souls_, of their own. Not to the extent of Sovereign or the other Reapers, obviously but…a personality seemed to fill each one, welded into her very structure with every nut and bolt.

Shepard had served on many ships, and she had felt many of these spirits, these…personalities. The _Jefferson_ had been a bold and lively girl, saucy in her way…the kind that would burst into a room with a giggle but still lay a man on his backside with a single broad-fisted punch.

The _Ottawa_ had been quiet, mellow, somewhat shy…the cute blonde girl in the corner with the freckles and the demure grin.

The _Normandy_, of course, was a huntress…graceful, sleek, sophisticated but as deadly as a jungle panther, a woman willing to fight to the death for honor.

As every ship had a life and a spirit, however…so, too, could that spirit be broken. It could be torn, traumatized and twisted into an evil, broken thing. Such ships had a specific name. Every nerve in Shepard's body spoke that name the moment her foot set down within the geth ruin.

_Ghost ship_.

Not a single human begin was alive here. She could feel that down to her very bones. As her omni-light passed over the limp forms of several geth slotted into the walls her chill only grew, her jaw tightening.

"It's _haunted_ in here," Kasumi whispered, the feeling not having escaped any of them.

"You believe in ghosts?" Tali asked.

"Don't you?" Kasumi asked. The quarian shivered a little.

"I didn't until we came in here," she admitted.

"Take it easy," Shepard ordered. "Let's stay focused. The sooner we find that lockdown the sooner we can get out of here."

"Just so long as all these geth don't just suddenly wake up," Kasumi pointed out.

"You just _had_ to say that, didn't you," Tali lamented.

Moving deeper into the ship, weapons up and fingers on triggers, the quartet was tense beyond belief. Shepard forced herself to keep her breathing even, making a conscious effort to remain focused and steady. Startling when weapons-ready was how people got killed accidentally. Their footsteps echoing strangely through the convoluted corridors were not helping…and on more than one occasion made it sound as if they were being followed.

Shepard had never been on a geth ship before. Cold and technical as it was it also had a strange flowing architecture about it. The dormant machines they came across now and again seemed to be watching them, even in lifelessness.

For all their tension, however, nothing happened. They found the console uneventfully, and as the other three stood guard, Shepard released the lockdown command.

Almost instantly, the console lit up in flashing green, the now familiar high-pitched shriek lancing out, adding teeth to her headache.

"Bosh'tet," she heard Tali grump even as she snatched her hands back from the console, reaching automatically for her rifle.

_Warning. Geth activating in sections 2 and 9_. _Emergency 101 is declared. Section directors are ordered to put their sections on lockdown. _

"Of course," Kasumi breathed as the four headed quickly for the door. Scanning the corridor and seeing it empty, Shepard narrowed her eyes.

"Kasumi, Liara, left wall," She ordered. "Tali with me on the right. Move steadily and fucking shoot _anything_ that moves and is not us."

They moved to position, flanking the hallway. As they went, Shepard half glanced back from her rifle sights and told Tali, "31.24."

The quarian blinked in confusion. "What?"

"The answer to your question," Shepard said in irritation. "31.24"

"I…I didn't ask any question, Shepard," Tali replied.

"Tali, you just asked me what the square root of 976 was!"

"I-I _didn't_," Tali insisted. "Why would I ask you that and…how do you even _know_ the square root of-"

"Three hostiles, dead ahead," Liara warned just as a trio of geth lights bloomed from the darkness. Shepard snapped her eye back to the scope and dropped one, biotics wreathing the second.

"30.8," she announced as if giving an order. "30.2"

Tali's confusion was turning to worry. They were in the middle of a firefight with the geth and Shepard was reciting numbers.

_Maybe she __**did**__ hit her head…there was no cut or lump but…_

Everything dissolved into chaos as more and more geth units appeared, the project VI announcing every few moments that different sections had become active. Barely able to hear anything over the near constant roar of gunfire, Tali was unable to tell if Shepard's recitation was continuing.

What she failed to notice at _all_ was the faint green shimmer that flowed over Shepard's eyes once or twice, each flare lasting only a fraction of a second but punctuated by a sharp shudder of her muscles, a momentary lapse in her gunfire.

After what seemed like an eternity, scorched and overheated, the four managed to bully their way through the geth ranks and out of the wreckage of the ship. The cool evening air seemed to wrap around them as they ran into the grass of the valley floor.

They stumbled to a halt, Shepard turning and pegging two trooper units that had managed to follow them. As they fell she kept her weapon up and fixed until it became apparent no more were in pursuit.

Pulling off her helmet, her face grimy with sweat, Shepard swiped a glove over it before pressing her finger to her ear bud. "Archer, Shepard. The goddamn lockdown is lifted. Where the _fuck_ is David?"

_{Commander…are you and your team all right?}_ came the tentative response.

"Oh, we're _fucking peachy_!" she spat in return. "We just fell down a goddamn mountainside after that _thing_ took over our crawler, and then had a lovely stroll through your broken geth ship filled with _active motherfucking units_! How's _your_ day going so far?"

_{My God I…I'm sorry, I can see how it might have activated the dormant geth but…how did it get control of your crawler? That shouldn't be possi-}_

"That's just one of about a _million_ goddamn questions I want answers to!" She snarled back. "Give me the fucking coords to Atlas so I can _stop_ this thing before something _else_ explodes!"

_{I…you are not too far from there now,}_ he answered. _{It is set into the mountainside at the northern end of the valley floor, perhaps two miles from your current position. Shepard please…remember, this is __**not**__ David's fault. He is confused or…delirious. When you find him please…don't hurt him.}_

"Shepard out," she replied with a grump, cutting the connection. She looked at her team, the scowl still affixed to her face. "Anyone hurt? No? Good. Station is two miles north. Let's get moving and get this done."

As they headed off across the field Liara started to move up to Shepard's side, only to slow when Tali caught her arm. "Li," the quarian murmured softly. "I'm…worried. A-about Shepard…"

"Why?"

"Just before the firefight, she said a number," Tali confided. "I asked her what she meant and she said it was the answer to my question…the square root of something. I didn't _ask_ her that question. I didn't ask her _any_ question at all. Why would I ask her to calculate square roots in a situation like that? And that wasn't all…even as we were fighting, at least a couple of times I heard her just saying random numbers…like she was giving orders. I don't think she realized she was doing it."

Liara looked worriedly forward at Shepard's back. "Could…she must have hit head when the crawler crashed but…why would there be no bruise? No mark at all?"

"I-I don't know but…I don't even know if it's that but…I thought you should know. I think we should be careful, keep an eye on her."

Liara nodded, taking Tali's hand and squeezing it before moving forward and falling in to step at Shepard's side. Looking at the woman's face a moment, trying not to think about how close she had come to losing her yet again, she ventured, "Is your head feeling any better?"

Shepard half-blinked and looked at her. "No, not really," she admitted, then shrugged. "It's just a headache. All that goddamn shrieking, it's like shoving ice picks in your ears."

"It is…unpleasant," Liara admitted, and the human woman gave her a faint smile, reaching over and gripping her shoulder lightly a moment.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this, Tianlán."

"If I recall, it was I who dragged myself into it," Liara reminded her gently. "You wished me to stay aboard the _Normandy_ and watch vids."

Shepard sighed, shoulders sagging a little before she shook her head. "I just want you safe," she murmured.

"I know," Liara told her. Her hand moved out, finding that of her love, their fingers entwining. Feeling the asari's faint tremble, Shepard held it tightly, trying to convey silently what she did not feel she could articulate well enough verbally.

By the time they reached the great doors to Atlas station, the evening had matured to almost full dark, the sky alive with stars. Though the sun hadn't quite set all the way, the mountains around them blocked any trace of its waning light.

Liara told Shepard nothing about what Tali had said but she had been watching Shepard closely as they walked, and the woman seemed her normal self…tense, irritated, yes but not erratic or notably out of sorts.

As they got the doors opened and looked into the gloom beyond, Shepard checked her thermal clip and warned, "Remember, we have a lot of mechs not yet accounted for, and there could be more geth inside. Keep 'em peeled and be ready for _anything_."

The three others nodded, but none of them truly had any idea of what would soon befall. In all their collective experience, nothing could have prepared them for what would confront them within.

* * *

><p>Shepard's prediction of her luck as always, sadly, came true. Barely had they entered than wave after wave of mechs descended upon them, their normally red face-lights shimmering with waves of green as they came. Mech after mech dropped, the quartet leaving a trail of shattered metal bodies and spent thermal clips in their wake as they pressed onward and inward.<p>

More frustrating than the mechs were the doors. The AI had completely infiltrated everything in the building, including the door mechanisms and the holographic interfaces. Shepard cursed as she watched yet another one flash to red, a green interface dancing over the wall before sliding into place over a further door.

"It's _herding_ us," Tali lamented. She couldn't even attempt to hack the system or open the doors herself with her omni-tool, as any connection would only leave an opening for the AI to take over that device as well.

"We haven't got a choice," Shepard stated. "Until we find a way to take this thing out or hack in without risking our own devices we've got to go where it leads and hope an answer presents itself."

They moved down a set of stairs into a lower level. There were fewer mechs now, and more geth. Their progress was almost painfully slow and at times backwards as they tried to find an alternate route…a route the AI didn't immediately lock down.

Confronted with yet another wall console that flashed with green and screamed at her, Shepard's temper finally wore too thin. Gritting her teeth she aimed her pistol at it and blew a hole through the display, the image and sound dying as the screen ruptured and bled wires.

Her head felt like a band-saw was running through her skull, her nerves were singing with tension. The anesthetic quality of the medi-gel was wearing off and her chest was an angry flame where her tank rubbed on the burn. No matter how many synths they killed more seemed to appear. They were being herded by a sadistic, murderous AI who continuously shrieked at them. She just wanted all this fucking mess _done_.

Even so, military discipline and her own common sense wouldn't allow her to make foolish mistakes…especially not when such mistakes would possibly cost lives under her protection. For not being trained soldiers, Tali, Liara, and Kasumi all seemed to be holding up better than she was, and she was both humbled and shamed by that fact.

A squad of geth troopers pinned them down a few corridors beyond. With no grenades left among the group a problem that could have been erased in mere moments became a drawn out firefight that left them nearly spent of ammo…and Kasumi injured.

"It's just a scratch," she protested as Shepard scrutinized the gash in her leg. A bullet had torn by, grazing a deep laceration along the muscle. Had Kasumi been wearing a full hard-suit it would have only dented her pads. As it was, she had insisted upon simple body armor as it was hard to be light on one's feet or stealth about unseen when you were more heavily encumbered.

"You're a doctor now, Goto?" Shepard asked as she accepted a packet of medi-gel from Tali, very carefully packing the wound and then pasting sealant atop it. "It will need sutured and even numb, you're going to limp. I want you to stay in the middle of the group, let the rest of us cover you as needed. No more running ahead."

"Kind of puts a damper on my position as scout," Kasumi teased.

"I'd rather have you _alive_," Shepard said sternly. Finishing dressing the wound she helped the thief to her feet. Kasumi tested the leg, wincing only slightly, then nodded.

"All right. I'm point. Tali and Kasumi in the middle. Li will cover our asses. Plan your shots. We're running low on clips and if we run out we are royally fucked unless we can salvage more."

They continued on, down a small service lift and through yet another small squad of AI-controlled geth before confronting three doors. As they approached the HIs did their strange little dance again before two locked down, leaving the furthest door in the green.

Jaw muscles as tight as steel, Shepard edged up and opened it, her sniper quickly scanning over the dim room beyond.

Her first thought was _dead end…of course_. The room had no other clear egress. A large computer console dominated the center of the floor and the far wall was composed of thick Plexiglas. A strange rippling light glimmered through it, the impression similar to being underwater. As the four moved into the room, Shepard removed her helmet, setting it aside as she warily regarded the console.

Visually it looked clear. The display didn't shift into their cyber-stalking green banshee friend, nor did the HI interface suddenly power down or lock up. As she looked over the data scrolling over the display, Kasumi and Liara cautiously approached the far window.

"Shep, you'll probably want a look at this," Kasumi called a second later. Abandoning the console Shepard strode over and peered down.

The window overlooked a huge room, dominated by great cables as thick as tree trunks, ringed with huge slabs of machinery. In the midst of the cables and circle of machinery a brilliant ball of white light hovered and spun, as cold in light and swift in shape as a pulsar in the depths of space.

"That must be it," Liara whispered. "The heart of the AI."

"I don't see Archer's brother," Shepard noted, squinting at the light. "He's got to be in there somewhere, or close-"

"Shepard, I think this is the AI power control," Tali said from behind them. When Shepard had moved away she'd taken to scrutinizing the displays herself…though wisely had made no attempt to touch them. As Shepard got back to her side, she indicated some read-outs. "These are the results of generator status checks done every few moments. The amount of energy and data flowing into and out of that room is astronomical. I've never seen anything like it. Shepard...this control sequence _here_ would halt the generators feeding the AI. It would starve in mere moments, too quickly for it to even hope to attempt to power them back on itself."

"Would we have time to input the cut-off sequence fast enough?" Shepard asked. "The moment any of us starts accessing this interface that AI will be all over this console like a bad rash."

"Manually…no," Tali admitted. "However…if the sequence were input into an omni-tool it could then be transferred into the console in less than a nanosecond. The sequence would be complete the moment the AI even registered its connection. But…"

"That means _using_ an omni-tool," Shepard frowned, then straightened. "Can you isolate mine? Wipe it of any non-essential programming or information the AI could hack?"

"I could but it would be cleared back down to factory defaults. Any data or personal programming you have preserved on it would be lost forever."

"I have backups on the console in the Nest," Shepard told her. "And it sounds like it's our best shot. Do it."

She powered up her omni-tool and held her wrist out toward Tali, who immediately began to purge it. In seconds, the tool was reset back to its factory program. She input the code sequence for the shut down, then nervously nodded. "There…th-that _should_ do it."

Shepard wiped her free hand over her face, then raked it back through her damp hair, her brown eyes shifting to meet Liara's a moment. The asari looked nervous but gave an encouraging nod. Shepard managed a thin but genuine grin.

"All right," she said, looking back at the console. "Be ready for anything. I wouldn't be goddamn surprised if this summons a Reaper."

Aiming the omni-tool at the console Shepard couldn't help holding her breath as her fingers hovered over the controls. "Three, two, one…go."

As Shepard sent the sequence the console's displays and interfaces suddenly went wild. All four women recoiled a little, Kasumi shielding her eyes from the bright amber flashes that…thank heavens…did _not_ turn green.

A breath later, the HI displays all went dark. Shepard lowered her arm, her omni-tool interface dying.

"Did it work?" Kasumi asked, blinking. "Was…was that _it_?"

"Hnn…" Shepard murmured, taking a step back. Liara looked at her, brows knitting as Tali moved past, rushing over to the window.

"No…no, the systems still look like they're active…oh _fist'aka_!"

Shepard turned, seemed to stagger slightly, and made a stiff, weaving course for the door. Her hands spread and groped in front of her as she stumbled slightly, then regained her balance.

"Shepard!" Alarm appeared on Liara's face as she trotted after the human. "What is the matter? Where are you going?"

She caught her arm just as Shepard lurched out of the door and into the hallway. Behind them the portal slammed shut, whisking just centimeters away from the heels of Liara's boots and locking down with an audible thump of bolts. She whirled around, eyes widening as she stared at it, then gasped as she turned back to Shepard.

The commander was standing there, swaying slightly back and forth as if on the deck of a gently rocking boat. Her hands were slightly spread as if to keep her balance, and she was noticeably shivering. Then, beneath the woman's exposed skin, Liara could see a slow ripple of emerald light. It traced over her veins, rising in a pulse along her neck and up over her face before it seemed to fade. As it did, the pupils of the woman's wide brown eyes suddenly lit up the ghostly and eldritch green of foxfire.

Liara felt both her heart and her stomach clench, fear and realization filling her with ice water at the same instant. She had forgotten. They had _all_ forgotten.

_The AI can control electronics, anything with a computer program…no matter how minute. Shepard is filled with cybernetics, her very blood swimming with microscopic computers that accept repair protocol commands not only through pre-programmed imperatives but also through wireless impulses!_

The programs were incredibly sophisticated, of course. Nanites were so cutting edge they were still considered theoretical in most fields. Cerberus and its immense resources were the only reason that any organically developed nanites even existed…and they were all within Shepard.

As it had taken control of the computer consoles, the door interfaces, the crawler, the geth and the mechs…the AI now had control of the deadliest weapon on the planet.

Commander Shepard.

All of this was realized by the asari in a single breath, her whole body left cold and shaking and horrified in its wake. Struggling, she managed to gasp only a single word.

"_Del…_"

The inhuman green glow of those eyes shifted from staring blankly at nothing to focusing on the asari. Liara found herself eye to eye with the monstrosity of the AI, looking at her from out of the face of the one she loved.

Then Shepard's lips parted, and in the soft green glow Liara saw tears well up, spilling over the commander's dark lashes and tracing down her cheeks.

When she spoke, her words were barely more than a hoarse whisper…Shepard's voice and yet, _not_.

"_Please…"_ she said, another glistening pearl of saline breaking free. "_Please…make it __**stop**_…"


	44. Chapter 44

A/N: Surprise!

And still my usual slightly left of canon! Happy Saturday!

* * *

><p>"Can you hear me?" Liara asked, her blue eyes reflecting back the supernatural green light that cascaded from Shepard's gaze. "Do you understand me?"<p>

"Yes," came the reply.

"Is…this the AI?"

"No," Shepard answered, which surprised the asari. Del was clearly not in control of what she was saying, the resonance and cadence of her words was not her own. She didn't even know if the commander was conscious or…in truth, even still alive.

_No! Don't think that. She __**is **__alive. You know that, you have to trust it. Shepard's alive in there, somewhere._

However it left a conundrum. If it was not Shepard speaking, and not the AI, then who _was_ it?

"Do you have a name?" she asked. "What is your name?"

"David."

Archer's brother, the human mind they'd linked into the AI. Liara blinked, brows knitting. Was it possible? Could the integration not have been as fully successful as they thought? No one had ever tried to connect an organic computer to a synthetic one. There was no way to predict the outcome. Clearly they had expected a seamless melding but instead…could it be that the AI and the human man were conflicting? Struggling against one another for control?

"David…" Liara tried to sound soothing, compassionate. "David, I am Liara. I want to help you, but you have…you have taken over my friend. I need you to…_please_, I need you to let her go."

"No…no…_can't_. He is loud. He will come here instead. He wanted to walk her off the cliff. He wanted you to crash. No…have to stay. Please…please, he is loud. Make it stop."

Liara's mind was spinning. She could only assume 'he' was the AI program, and that by 'come here instead' he was indicating that if he left his control of Shepard's body the AI would then take it over…likely with more tragic results.

"He was the reason that we crashed? That Shepard _di_….n-nearly walked off the cliff?"

"Come…come…"

Shepard reached out, her motions jagged and unsteady. She moved more as a marionette tied to a string than a normal human being…a marionette that was resisting the tug.

Her hand closed on Liara's, hanging on as she turned and began a halting course down the hallway.

"Hard…"David lamented with her voice. "Hard…she is fighting...she is angry…"

Liara tried not to gasp in relief. So, some part of Del was at least alive, and apparently doing what she did best.

"She's probably afraid," Liara told him. "She doesn't understand what you are doing to her, doesn't know what's going on. Can…can she _hear_ me?"

Shepard's head craned to the side, her green-tinged gaze sweeping around to Liara. "I can allow it," David said. "She likes you. I will let her hear you, let her speak-…"

Shepard grunted and trundled to a halt. The fire never left her eyes but suddenly her motions seemed a bit more fluid, and the words that emerged were unmistakably her own. "Li? Li, where are you? What the _fuck_ is going on?"

"Shepard! Shepard, I'm here!" Liara grasped her cheeks.

"Where? I can…you sound far away. What…what am I _seeing?_ What the fuck _is_ all this? Tianlán, where are you? You sound far away… I can't find you."

"I am right in _front_ of you, Shepard. I am touching your face…can you not feel me?"

"N-no," Shepard replied. "No, I can't…feel _anything_. What the hell is going on? Was I shot?"

"No, you are not injured," Liara assured. "Shepard, listen to me. David has taken over your nanites and cybernetics. He has control of your body, but he is allowing you to hear and speak to me. I am standing with you in the corridor on Atlas station."

"The AI?" Shepard said in a low, horrified voice. "The AI took me over-…Li, you have to get away! It's dangerous! It'll hurt-"

"No, it is _not_ the AI!" Liara interrupted. "It is _David_. I…I do not think the integration was seamless. I think both entities retained their full identities and are now trapped in a struggle against one another. David merely wants it to stop. He told me that he took you over so that the AI could not. He needs our help."

"Tianlán, I don't…" Shepard sounded helpless, and Liara knew the woman was afraid. Who would not be in such a situation? Then after a moment's pause she murmured, "Yes, I see him now…I think I can see him."

"See…_David_? Shepard, tell me exactly what you can see, what you are experiencing."

"It's dark but…but it _isn't_. I can't feel anything. I have…there's no sense of my body being there. Everything is numb, but I can hear you. I see…I see numbers. I see…it's like a waterfall, a shimmering curtain but it's all…it's all mathematics. I can't explain it…I don't even know how to really comprehend it."

"You said you could see David?"

"Yes, I can see him. He's far away but…I can _see_ him, sitting there, but he's _not_…" Shepard let out a snarl of frustration. "I can't explain it. There just aren't any words to describe it. I'm not even really seeing it, it's just…it just _is_, somehow."

"It is all right," Liara soothed. "I am here with you and I am not leaving your side. We have to find a way to David and the heart of the AI. We have to shut all this down…free him, and prevent the AI from making its way off-world. Then this will all be over."

"He's coming closer," Shepard said, and then a breath later jolted again. She stiffened, her voice once more no longer her own.

"We must go," David said. "I must show you. You must make it stop. It's loud…_loud_ in here…"

"Can Shepard still hear me?" Liara asked.

"Yes. She is here. She can hear. Please, must show you."

He took her hand again and started on his way once more. This time his motions seemed to be smoother, almost natural. Shepard, it seemed, was no longer fighting him as hard.

Her entire body language had changed. Gone was the confident stride Shepard always possessed when in uniform or hard-suit. The square back and set shoulders of a seasoned military soldier had vanished. Instead her body language spoke of timidity, hesitation. Her shoulders were rounded forward, her head lowered slightly, her gait less sure.

David, it seemed, was a rather reserved spirit.

_His brother said he was the kindest, gentlest person that he knew. I can see that in the way he walks. He has a softness about him…he was not made for something like this_.

They entered a large laboratory and Shepard released her hand, approaching a dark console. Spreading her gloved fingers over the controls the display suddenly lit up.

"He cannot get into systems if I am there, but I am small and weak," David told her. "He is strong, so loud…but I can show you."

An image took over the console, a recording. Liara could see Archer talking with a young man. There was no sound but she could tell by the way the second man stood, a stance mirrored in the woman beside her, that this was David.

Then Archer's lips moved and to her surprise, so did Del's, and she was speaking in Archer's voice.

"David, can you recite yesterday's logs for me?"

The voice switched back to David, as he replied on the screen. The younger man seemed distracted, not paying attention to the older. "The square root of 875 is 29.58…the square root of 876 is 29.59…"

"David, please pay attention!" Archer snapped, and the smaller man hunched, slapping his hands over his ears. Even Shepard did so as the log played, mimicking the man on the screen.

"Loud! It's loud!"

"I'm sorry, I won't yell again, David. Would you please recite yesterday's logs?"

The image fuzzed then changed. Now David was absent and Archer was talking to an unfamiliar woman.

"It'll work, I'm telling you," Archer insisted. "David is not only a mathematical savant he has a completely eidetic memory. Anything he's ever read or heard he can recite perfectly, every time. His is the only mind that is even _capable_ of keeping up with the AI program."

"You are forgetting that your brother is _also_ autistic. He is a mathematical genius, yes. He can understand and speak to the geth. He is amazing on levels I still cannot believe, but the fact remains that the AI cannot just be integrated, it must be _dominated_. David's is _not_ a dominating mind, Gavin. There is absolutely no way to predict the outcome if we connect David to the AI program. Even putting that aside, do I really need to remind you that given his condition, David cannot _actually_ volunteer to do so. He is simply not capable of understanding the risks and accepting their consequences willingly. It would be like hooking up a child!"

"I would never do _anything_ to hurt David or put him at risk," Gavin insisted. "I have custodial authority over him and I am authorized to make decisions on his behalf-"

"For his own well-being! This is _not_ for his well-being, Gavin…this is for _your_ ambition!"

"This is for the well-being of every human man, woman and child!" Gavin replied angrily. "How many would die in a war with the geth? How many were slaughtered at Eden Prime? Need I remind you of the ships destroyed at the Citadel? The only way to prevent that from happening again is to see this project through…stop the geth on their most basic level. No other human being we've found is capable of what David can do. No one else can calculate as he can. No one else has the gifts that he possesses and it is _those_ gifts that make any of this even _potentially _workable!"

"Then take down the AI," the woman insisted. "Wipe it. We can create a simple VI interface instead and then-"

"No," Gavin sighed. "No, the AI is just as necessary. David has the calculating skills and the human will to drive this thing but even he has limitations. The AI is needed to spread the new commands through the full geth network as swiftly as possible. It must hit every geth everywhere nearly simultaneously. David cannot do that on his own and even a VI would be too hobbled, unable to compensate quickly enough or to full practicality. We need that melding of the two to achieve ideal resolution. If we cannot do this we may as well shut this project down."

"Then perhaps _that_ is what we should do," the woman sighed. "This is your brother, Gavin. Your _brother_. And you would sacrifice his life and mental well-being for this…"

"If it saves so many more…" Gavin murmured. "I have to."

* * *

><p>Liara's eyes were gloss as the console fell silent again. Archer had lied to them. David hadn't volunteered, he'd been forced. Archer knew the risks, but because he was so insistent upon his vision hundreds of people had died, his own brother was suffering, and the entire galaxy was at risk.<p>

Not to mention, he had nearly taken Shepard away from her again.

Her face was grim as she thought silently a while, then looked at her companion. "David, did the AI take over the crawler?"

"Yes," David told her, bobbing his head a little, helplessly. "The little things, inside of her. The little things that let us come here…they sing like the computers sing, like the geth sing. It was hard but he followed the song here, then followed the hard path into crawler."

_Song…he must mean the wireless signal. And the 'hard path'…that must mean a direct connection. The AI infiltrated the wireless signal of Shepard's nanites and then had gone from her along the connections of the electronics in the crawler to take over the engine computer. The moment Shepard touched the HI interface in the crawler the AI was able to take it over._

"How did _he_ control the steering?" she asked.

"He was still here," David responded. "She fought very hard…like she fought me, but he was still here."

"So…she wasn't actually fighting the _steering wheel_ for control, but her own muscles," she said. "This still does not make any sense. If he had her, if…if he was _there_, why did he leave?"

"Songs in here are foreign," David told her. "She fights very hard. Hard for him to infiltrate the songs, hard for him to stay, maintain connection. He was angry, could not achieve full integration. So, he left…shut off the power inside here and left."

"Shut off the…you mean he cut the electrical signals from her brain to her heart and lungs…_that_ is why she-…but if it was so hard to…to 'follow the songs' of the nanites or to retain control then…how did you manage to…to get _there_."

"Tried to follow the songs too. Hard. Only touched…here and there, before she shoved me down, made me fall out. But the hard paths…not so bad. I slept in the console, and when she came and opened the hard path, I am here. Still, very hard to stay. Harder when she fights…better now. She is not fighting, she is listening. She is angry. Very angry at Gavin-"

His voice suddenly changed and it was Del once more. "You're fucking right I'm angry at that festering piece of shit! Li…we need to get into that core and shut the AI down. David is right. He can't stay in here very long, the programs for the nanites are too foreign for him to retain a full hold. It's like…slipping on ice. I can feel it too, through the math. If he cuts his connection here then that just leaves me open for the AI to try and take hold again. This time I'm sure it'll just hang on long enough to get me to shoot myself in the fucking head…or shoot _you_. I'm _not_ letting that happen."

"Neither am I. David, we need to get to you. Can you help us with that? Can you take us to where you are?"

"I am here," David replied.

"No, I know you are inside Shepard right now but I need you to take us to where your _body_ is…to where _he_ is…can you do that?"

"Yes," he replied. "There are machines waiting. I will try and talk to them but they may be his. If they are, they will hurt you."

"No, do not try to talk to them. If you see the machines, if they are going to attack I need you to let Shepard have control again. Can you do that?"

"I can help her to hear, and to speak," he said after a moment's puzzling. "I can try and help her to move her arms but…I cannot help her to see."

"Why? Why can you not help her to see?"

"Hot…hot in here," David replied. "Hot…and _loud_…we must go now."

He clamped down on Liara's hand again and rushed for the far door, lurching again a little before his motion eased. Apparently it was still Shepard's instinct to fight him a bit, even though she knew he was not the enemy.

_Having someone else in control of your body must be disturbing_, she thought. _Why, though? Why can he not help her to see? What does that mean?_

They climbed down a set of steps, Liara drawing her side-arm just in case. A security panel shimmered next to a heavy door but when David touched it, it flared red.

Mouth dropping open, Shepard began making the strangest sound. A rapid chittering, grinding squeal emerged from her throat and pulsed over a tongue that was swiftly clicking. Liara was so startled by it that it took her a moment to realize it was very near the same sound the geth made when they 'talked' to each other.

Shepard's eyes brightened in a sharp flash and suddenly the interface switched to amber, flickered, then activated. The door slid open.

It was the room they had seen from the observatory window. Large enough that their footsteps echoed, the room was centered by the huge ring of machinery, draped with those massive cords, and home to that flashing orb of white light that radiated cold instead of heat. Turning her head, Liara could see the observatory window…and noticed Tali staring down at them. The moment she spotted them the quarian banged on the glass and waved, then seemed to turn away. Apparently she was beckoning to Kasumi who had likely been trying to get the door open, for a moment later the thief also appeared. The window bore marks where the pair had tried to shatter it with gunfire in a bid to escape…apparently, it was bullet proof.

Gesturing at them to stay put, Liara looked around. There was no sign of David's body still…but there _were_ geth.

She saw the first of the face-lights bloom out of the corners of the room and lifted her pistol, firing. "David, I need Shepard!" she cried. There were a dozen of them. Potentially she could take them out alone but she would far rather hedge bets in their favor. Lighting with biotics she sent a blast sailing across, throwing two from their feet.

"Liara, where are you?" Shepard suddenly barked in her own voice, snatching out her rifle. "I…I still can't see anything but the math-"

"I am at your eight o'clock," Liara called back. "Can you feel your arms?"

"Yeah…kind of…they're distant but I know I'm holding my rifle. Just tell me where to shoot!"

"Eleven o'clock!"

Shepard instantly twisted and opened fire. Two geth units collapsed as the rest ignited their guns with a roar. Liara flung up a barrier in front of them, the bullets sparking off of it in flares of sapphire.

"I am keeping a barrier between us and them so you will have to do all the firing," Liara shouted. "One unit at noon, one at two-thirty, two at four!"

Shepard turned, taking out two at four o'clock before swinging her fire over to the one at two-thirty. As he dropped she aimed toward noon but the synth had moved, strafing to the side.

"He's drifting right!" Liara panted. Shepard's shots followed him and finally managed to chew through his legs. As he squealed and dropped, he fired a spat that slammed into the floor. One ricocheted on the wall and skipped past the edge of the barrier. Liara felt the heat of it skid across her cheek and half fell, biotics dying.

"Are there any more?" Shepard shouted, craning her head and gun around. "Li? Li!"

"The last of them are down," Liara quickly responded, regaining her balance. Her fingers pressed the gash on her cheek and she winced. It was not deep but it was long, and had narrowly missed taking her in the eye. Swiping some of the blood away, she gripped Shepard's arm. "They're down."

Shepard lowered her rifle, then shivered as David came over her again, punctuated by the way her shoulders and the rifle suddenly sagged. He dropped the weapon.

"Sad when they die," he lamented. "Sad when they disappear into numbers."

"David, we're nearly done," Liara soothed. "Where is your body? We need to power this down, get you unhooked. Then you can go home."

David took a few paces forward, then lifted a hand and pointed…directly into the spinning orb of light. Liara squinted at it, then shook her head.

"That is the AI's main power transfer," she told him. "I need to know where _you_ are."

"Within," he replied. "Such pretty light…all around…I am within."

He was _inside_ the light? "No…surely even your brother would not do something so cruel…" she whispered.

There was only one explanation. David's body was not only connected to the AI interface but was suspended in a Faraday cage directly within its power interface. No one would be able to free him without taking out the power first, and the moment the main power died it would leave David's own bio-electric energy available as a back-up power system. The AI would latch on to him as a battery and David would be utterly destroyed within a few minutes…just long enough for the AI to reboot the generators and restore its own main power grid.

"This is monstrous…" she whispered. Wiping her face she touched Shepard's arm. "David…can you let Tali and Kasumi out? I will need their help."

"He has the door," David told her. "I…will try, but he is loud…so loud…"

"I will help you, David," Shepard told him, voice shifting again. "I will help the noise a little if you can get them out. Then we can stop him and the noise will end."

"Yes, I will try…"

Shepard turned and walked over to one of the main struts from which the gigantic cabling sprouted. Opening the side to bare electronics she stuck her hand within, taking direct hold of a coupling. Immediately the smell of burning leather filled the air as the high-temperature of the coupling began to sear Shepard's glove.

Her mouth dropped open and she began to make those sounds again, that unearthly geth-speak that, until today, Liara would have sworn an organic throat could not produce.

Looking up at the observation window, she could see Tali and Kasumi still staring down at them…the former with her hands plastered to the glass. As she watched, both suddenly turned, looking over their shoulders, then ran from view.

The door must have opened.

"Thank the Goddess," Liara breathed as Shepard withdrew her hand from the aperture. The glove was burnt badly along the palm but the inner padding and reinforced mesh had prevented serious injury to her skin.

Less than a minute later, both their companions rushed in the door.

"Are you two all ri—_Keelah_!"

Tali had caught sight of Shepard's glowing eyes and recoiled with a horrified cry. Liara lightly took her arm.

"David has taken control of her," she said. "_David_, not the AI. They are in conflict, the integration was not a success. He has been helping us. Shepard can still hear you and even speak if necessary."

"God, that's creepy…you ok in there, Shep?" Kasumi asked, brows knit.

"Oh, I'm wonderful," Shepard retorted.

"There is no time," Liara told them. "We have a major problem. David's body is in a Faraday cage in the center of the AI's power convergence."

"What…does _that_ mean?" Kasumi asked, but Tali's eyes went wide. She felt herself go pale, though of course that was not visible outside of her helmet.

"That means if we cut the generators the AI will switch its power interface to the cage…and drain David's body directly of its bio-electric signature. In short, he'll be a back-up battery for a few moments until it can reboot the generators. We cannot shut them down without killing him."

"I thought this was Archer's _brother_? How could he do this to his own brother?" Kasumi sounded shocked and utterly disgusted.

"He apparently thinks David's sacrifice is worth the lives being saved…only no lives will be spared at _all_ if this AI gets off this planet," Liara told her. "Killing David is _not_ an option. We need alternatives."

Tali surveyed the equipment and the huge cabling around them. "We…would need to divert the power away from the AI systems rather than cut it…no, that wouldn't work. The way they have this set up diverting the power would only automatically switch it to the organic backup anyway."

"Could we get David out of there before cutting the power? If he's not in there then it can't switch to him…right?" Kasumi offered.

"Anyone trying to get close to that Faraday cage would get incinerated down to their constituent atoms in a nanosecond," Tali told her. "We would need to disrupt the power exchange, pass through very quickly, and cut the connection between the AI and David's body. Then we could shut the power down and the AI would be helpless."

"So how do we disrupt the power exchange?" Liara asked.

"A large enough mass would do it," Tali pondered. "Enough of the right materials…I'd say a minimum of about 30 kilos. Metal, silicone…salt water would even do it if it was sealed in a container."

Kasumi glanced to the side, then smiled. "I think we have a whole lot of volunteers," she said. Following her gaze, the others looked at the dead geth strewn across the floor.

"You are a genius," Tali beamed. "If we can drag two of the smaller troopers over here, we can drop them simultaneously against each of the transfer ports. Given their density and the level of electronics in their systems they will disrupt the power for nearly sixty seconds…long enough to get in and release David but not so long the emergency protocols switch to the Faraday cage."

With a great deal of effort, the three women dragged a pair of the smaller troopers over toward the center of the room. Shepard/David seemed distracted, talking in low voices to each other. It was an odd and somewhat disconcerting thing to observe, especially the way the tone of voice kept flipping back and forth.

They got the two geth propped. "Kasumi, you take that one. Liara, this one. When I give the signal, push them forward just enough they tip against the interface. Do _not _be touching them when they connect or your brain will boil in your skull."

"That's a pleasant image," Kasumi said dryly.

"The moment the exchange is disrupted I will go in and sever the connection."

"Be careful, Tali," Liara urged. She knew the quarian was the best qualified to cut the connection. If anyone could locate it and take it out fast enough, it would be her. However if the power burned through the geth and reconnected before she finished her work, she would be incinerated.

"I will," Tali promised, bracing herself to run. "Ok, on my mark. One, two…-"

She broke off as Shepard suddenly grabbed her arm and turned her head, looking into those unreal eyes.

"Tali," Shepard said in her own voice. "Wait…"

"Shepard, we _have_ to do this. It is the only way."

"David wants to say something," Shepard told her. Her stance changed and a breath later the other voice spilled from her lips.

"He will try to hide, when he sees," David told her. "He will hide where he can. The machines are broken but…he may fix them. He will try and hide-"

Tali was beyond spooked, knowing this was the voice of a man that was basically possessing her friend and commander. She understood what he was saying, of course. The AI might make a final, desperate leap into one of the dead geth and…depending on the amount of damage the unit had suffered, he might be able to control one long enough to take them out. It was a very slim risk…but it was still there.

"I-I understand."

"Be careful," Shepard urged, and this time it was herself. Tali nodded, and the woman released her. Taking a shaky breath, she steeled herself.

"Ok, on my mark. Three…two…one…_mark_!"

As Liara and Kasumi heaved their geth corpses forward against their respective interface panels, Tali broke into a run.

White light flared in a chaotic dance as the geth interrupted the power feed, metal bodies spasming in almost life as the hot plasma fire burned into ruined metal and silicone. The swirling orb faded and died away, revealing an atrocity.

The Faraday cage itself was actually rotating, a convergent series of metal hoops that spun in orbit around the man suspended in their midst. A great arching frame both held the supports for the rotating cage and for the thick nest of small cables that held him aloft.

Tali reached the orbit of the cage and slid in beneath their scope, grasping frantically for a connection in the base of the arching frame. Tearing it free shot a spray of embers across her face mask, the sparks bouncing off like fireflies colliding into a window. The spinning cage rumbled to a halt, the hoops resetting.

"Tali, hurry!" Kasumi urged.

Leaping up onto the platform right beneath the man she quickly located the bio-electric feed. "Bosh'tet," she murmured as she realized the actual connection to his body was out of reach.

Trembling, she steeled herself, then gasped a faint "I'm sorry."

Leaping upward she caught hold of one of the cables that dangled from his body, the weight of her own form suddenly suspended from it enough to tear it free of his flesh. Blood spilled down his side and she tumbled to the ground, rolling, and quickly darted back toward her companions…just as their make-shift geth buffers failed. The power reunited with a thunderous clap of energy. Liara grasped Tali's arm as the quarian steadied.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, just need…to get my breath. We…have to…shut down the generators."

"I have them," Kasumi called, already running for the manual control.

A moment later, there was an almost leviathanical groan, the white plasma fire slowly dimming down, funneling away as the generators deep below them drew to a halt.

"He is dying," David said with Shepard's mouth. "It is not so loud, it-"

"Shepard!" Liara cried out as the Commander's body suddenly snapped straight with a violently convulsive jolt. The green light flowing from her eyes suddenly deepened into crimson, and an inhuman shriek…the same that had dogged them since they had first landed on this cursed planet…erupted from her throat.

"No!" Tali gasped. It was happening, just as David had warned…but it was not one of the dead geth the AI was trying to escape to. It was making its last, desperate attack on both Shepard and the poor human savant that had become its unwitting rival.

Shepard slammed forward onto her hands and knees. Liara tore away from the quarian's side, rushing forward.

"Shepard!"

Tali nearly tackled the asari before she could actually grab hold of the human woman. "No! If the AI wins the first thing it will do is kill _you_!"

"_It's killing Shepard_!"

"Suspend her! Liara, suspend her!" Kasumi called frantically. Drawing on what biotic energy she could, Liara lashed out with flaring energy, Shepard suddenly lifting off the ground in an orb of biotic blue. Thrashing and shrieking, they could see light dancing along her veins, rippling along, illuminating her from within before fading away again. Her eyes flared a brighter red, then turned to green, only to flare red again.

Then with a final gasping grunt, Shepard suddenly went limp, light of both hues fading away. She dangled like a puppet with its strings cut, and for a few breathless moments the three women could only watch.

Then, taking a risk, Liara lowered her gently to the ground, letting her biotics die. Rushing forward, the asari dropped down at her side, cupping her cheek.

"Del…"

"Hmm…" Shepard groaned, grimacing as she licked her lips. Her brown eyes slowly fluttered open.

"Thank the Goddess," Liara gasped. "Is it…are you all right? Is it…you?"

"'s'me," Shepard murmured. "Feel a bit woozy but…"

Weakly pushing herself into a sit, Liara helping her, the asari then embraced the woman tightly. "Thank the Goddess…"

"Silence," a voice stated, faintly artificial and echoing slightly, as if it came from a com system. Though she had only ever heard the voice spoken through Shepard's vocal cords, Liara recognized it immediately. It was David, and he sounded exhausted, relieved. "He is gone. The loud is gone. It is quiet."

Turning her head, she looked toward the man suspended in the Faraday cage, and shuddered. His brother was not just _selfish_. His brother was not _just_ cruel and callous.

The only creature that would be capable of doing this to another was nothing but a _monster_.

David, bald, naked and trembling, was hanging from dozens of different cables. Some attached to ports drilled into his skull. Some, like the one that Tali had ripped free, pierced his sides. A series of four for each arm were bolted through the flesh. A slow wash of crimson seeped from the wound created by Tali's interference, tiny pats of red dripping to the polished floor.

The worst of it were the heavy pair of cables that actually vanished through his mouth…jaw wrenched so tightly open it looked almost as if it had been dislocated. His eyes, held open by tiny metal claws gripping tight into the flesh of his face, were staring, streaming a constant wash of tears.

"We…have to get him down from there. We have to unhook him," Liara whispered. Her heart ached for the poor man, and she felt nauseous with both grief and anger.

"I can probably sever the connections…a bit more gently than the last, if we can get him lowered to the floor. But he will need a great deal of medical care. We need to get him on board the _Normandy_, get him to Dr. Chakwas."

"Make sure everything is completely scrubbed of all traces of that AI first," Shepard mumbled, weakly getting to her feet with Liara's aid. "I don't want-"

"Commander! Thank God…_wait_!"

Running footsteps prompted the women to draw their guns as Archer rushed into the room. His face was streaked with sweat, taut and worn. Ignoring the weapons aimed in his direction he drifted to a halt, panting. "Thank God, you're all alright. You stopped it. David…"

"Hello, Gavin," David's voice piped in from the intercom.

"Hello, David."

"Do _not_ speak to him," Liara said hotly. "_Look_ at him! Look at what you have done to him!"

"If I had _my_ way we'd take him down and string _you_ up there," Kasumi nodded, the scowl on her face black.

Blinking, Gavin held up his hands. "No, no you don't understand-"

"What don't we understand?" Shepard growled. She had an arm slung over Liara's shoulder, her pistol in hand and aimed toward him. Liara could feel how weak the woman was…even the muzzle of her weapon was faintly trembling. "You used your brother like a guinea pig. He didn't volunteer, you _forced _him into direct battle with an AI he could not even _hope_ to overpower. You confused him, _hurt_ him, terrified him…_you_! His own _brother_! A man who should have been _protecting_ him!"

"I-It was the only way," Gavin stammered. "I…it was the only way to stop a war that could have claimed billions of lives. I never meant to hurt him. I never meant for any of this to happen this way. I love my brother, Commander-"

"Love? _That's_ love?" Tali demanded, pointing at the suspended form behind her. "That's _grotesque_! That's torture of an unbelievable sort! And you wired him up to be a back-up battery? To preserve the _AI _at the cost of _his_ life?"

"We…we thought it was best-"

Tali suddenly darted forward furiously, intent on hurting the man who had done such a horrible thing. Kasumi flung her arms around her, barely restraining her.

"No, don't…he's not worth it," she soothed. "He's not getting away with this, not now."

"I hope Shepard tears you apart, _bosh'tet_!" Tali barked, jabbing an angry finger in his direction.

"Tali," Shepard murmured. "Scrub the system, then contact the _Normandy_ and get a team down here with Dr. Chakwas. Then see if you can't get David down safely."

As Tali moved to obey, Kasumi walking with her with an arm around her shoulder still murmuring gently, Shepard's pistol drooped a little. Liara thought she was actually going to lower it before a pair of bullets spanked into the floor right at Gavin's feet, making the man yelp and dance back a step.

"As for _you_," Shepard said dangerously. "So much as think about moving and I'll light you up like the sun."

"C-Commander, I _swear_…I never m-meant…w-what are you going to do with him? With David?"

"Take him far away from _you_," Shepard spat. "You don't get to know where. You don't ever get to even speak his name, you selfish piece of _shit_. I will ensure that, even if I have to cut your goddamn tongue out to guarantee it. Now _sit down_."

Trembling, the man cautiously lowered himself to the ground.

"Tianlán, I heard him move," Shepard murmured softly to the asari she was still clinging to. "Is he sitting?"

"Yes, of…" Liara looked at the human woman, confused. "Of course he is sitting, Shepard. You can see-"

"No," Shepard said with an exhausted, wan little smirk, her voice resigned. "No…I _can't_ see."

"_What_?" Liara breathed, grasping Shepard's face and turning it toward her. The commander's dark brown eyes were almost lost in a sea of black, her pupils fully fixed and dilated. The whites were patched with crimson where fine vessels had burst. Liara turned her face a half centimeter more, until light fell directly over the commander's gaze, but the pupils didn't even twitch to react.

"_Shepard_…"

The commander's hand crept up, taking gentle hold of Liara's blue one, and she ever so faintly shook her head.

"I think I'm blind…"


	45. Chapter 45

A/N: Beware the shmexy!

* * *

><p>"Tell Joker to start his run the moment we hit atmo," Shepard ordered, even as she lay back on the bio-bed. "I want nothing to be left of that wreck but <em>dust<em>."

"Yes, ma'am," Jacob replied.

"Then tell him to set fire to the dust."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Joker will handle it," Miranda said tersely, a hand pressing momentarily against Shepard's shoulder. "Lay still."

"How's David?"

"Dr. Chakwas and Dr. Solus have him well in hand," Miranda replied.

Shepard felt fingers slide into hers. "Everything is being taken care of," Liara said gently. "Let Miranda do her work."

Shepard clung to the hand in hers and did her best to just be still. It was strange, feeling that her eyes were open, knowing there was light all around her, but seeing nothing but thick and ceaseless black.

She could faintly smell Miranda's perfume as the woman bent close. She could hear the tiniest hum of the medical scanner, fancied she could even feel a faint warm tingle as it swept over her body, taking measurements of everything down to the molecular level.

She kept hold of that warm hand in hers, trying not to fidget. It seemed forever had passed before Miranda spoke again.

"Well, David and that rogue AI did a number on you, that's for sure," she said. She sounded pissed, and Shepard imagined she was none too pleased that someone else's radically ambitious and morally reprehensible project had damaged _hers_.

_Stop that. Miranda doesn't think of you as just a project any more, and you know it. Yeah, she's probably a little pissed that her multi-trillion credit work has been damaged but…she's also probably pissed that her __**friend**__ was hurt_.

"David did what he did in a bid to protect us," Shepard said. "If he hadn't managed to link up with my cybernetics, it's a cinch the AI would have done so…and likely we'd all be dead now."

"Hmm," Miranda said with reluctant agreement. "Well, the good news is, beyond a few micro tears and some minor heat damage to the finer capillaries and fibers throughout your body, your muscular system came through the cybernetic hacking with flying colors. The remaining nanites are more or less undamaged though it does seem as though you lost a few million to the artificially generated heat of foreign control."

"What about her eyesight?" Liara ventured. Shepard felt the hand in hers squeeze a little more tightly.

"Well, that's another story," Miranda replied. "Shepard, you have nearly twelve times the amount of nanites clustered in your optic nerves and retinas than you should have. The increased numbers were probably necessary to allow the foreign programs to 'see'. Vision is a tricky process even at the best of times, requiring finer work to be efficient, as opposed to the effort it takes for mere large muscle movement. It explains why your eyes started to glow. Unfortunately when the nanites started to overheat…well. Such delicate tissues are not made to withstand drastic fluctuations in temperature. Couple that with the actual luminescence which was much like shining a laser directly into her eyes…or in this case, _out_ of them…and the damage was fairly swift and completely irreparable."

"Irreparable…" Liara murmured, and Shepard felt her fingers tighten. She gave another reassuring squeeze in return.

"Oh, don't worry. She'll see again," Miranda stated. "Just not with _those_ eyes. Her retinas are detached and burned over most of their surface. Her optic nerves are completely fried. She's even showing signs of heat scarring as far as her outer cornea."

"So what are we looking at?" Shepard asked, then mentally winced at the unintended irony of her words. If Miranda noticed she did not mention it, her voice perfectly clinical.

"Well, it will take several weeks to clone another healthy pair of your own eyes," she stated. "In the mean time I can put in full cybernetic implants but even those will take twenty four hours to be fully calibrated and ready for implantation."

"So I'm blind until tomorrow," Shepard asked.

"No…what I can do is adjust the nanites clustered in the vision and hearing centers of your brain to sync in full tandem. You'll have to wear a squealer on your collar, of course, but the ultrasonic pulses it sends out will be received by your ear and translated by the nanites to produce vision. Much like the echo-location of a dolphin. It will probably be a little annoying. You'll only see in pulses, of course, and it will only be black and white…kind of like walking around with a strobe light constantly going off, but you'll be able to function."

"How long will it take?"

"About an hour for me to calibrate the nanites. Five minutes to attach the squealer and adjust its settings. You'll have to lie still, and I want to treat that burn on your chest first."

"May I stay?" Liara asked the Australian.

"Sure, I don't see why not," Miranda replied. As she stepped away to get the necessary tools to link up to the nanites' control systems, Shepard felt her hand lifted before a soft kiss landed on her knuckles. She smiled slightly, turning her head toward where Liara was.

"You ok?"

"Yes," Liara murmured. "Though it seems you exist only to continuously scare the life out of me."

"Tianlán…"

"I know. Taking risks and throwing yourself into the fire…that is who you are, and it will never change. I would not want it to change, not really. It is part of the reason I…well, it is what makes you, _you_."

"Makes me dashing and charming enough to sweep a young asari maid off her feet, right?" Shepard teased.

"Perhaps," Liara hedged gently. "I just…"

"I know," Shepard murmured. "Hey, I promised to come back, didn't I? I'll _always_ come back."

"Thank you…"

Miranda returned a moment later, the pair falling to silence though their hands remained entwined.

"It was smart thinking on Tali's part…using her omni-tool's power discharge to restart your heart," Miranda commented as she carefully treated the burn. "You might end up with a little bit of scarring though…part of the burn is nearly third degree."

"Aww," Shepard pouted with fake indignation. "Not a _scar_…not on _my _pretty lily white skin…"

"Your skin is not even close to lily white," Miranda snorted a chuckle.

"No, but it _is_ pretty."

"Stop," Liara giggled, shaking her head.

"Yes, it is. I do good work after all," Miranda said dryly, and Shepard smirked.

Finishing with the burn, Miranda settled down in a chair, preparing her nanite interface. "You will have to hold fairly still for this, Shepard."

"Can I talk?" the commander asked.

"Sure, just don't turn your head any if you can help it."

"Did you see how David is doing?"

"He's in surgery," Miranda replied, setting to work. "They're removing the connection implants, repairing the physical damage. Both Mordin and Helen are confident they'll be able to undo the damage but it will take time. Joker is starting his strafing run within the next few minutes."

"Does it bother you that I want that wreck taken out?"

"No," Miranda told her. "While it would be ideal to have an intact geth subject for research ,with the units on that wreck now being active it would cost more lives trying to secure one than it would be worth…and for no guaranteed benefit. Better they're destroyed."

Shepard resisted the urge to nod, not wanting to interfere with Miranda's work, and simply stared upward with her unseeing eyes.

After a moment of silence, she heard Miranda clear her throat a little.

"Something on your mind, Lawson?" Del asked.

"Actually, to be completely honest…yes. I have been curious about something for a very long time and I suppose now that I have you as more or less a captive audience…"

"Oh? Curious about _me_? I thought you knew everything there is to know about me," she teased.

"I probably know more about you than you do yourself, Shepard," Miranda retorted. "At least…on some subjects. There is one mystery I haven't been able to solve, however…not even after two years of research."

"What's that?"

"Well, if it's not too personal…where did you get your name?"

"My name?" Shepard blinked.

"Yes," Miranda replied. "Your parents were unlikely to have named you and even if they had, your birth was never officially registered. Their last name was Torrfield, yet yours is Shepard. I figure it's possible you simply named yourself but you have expressed time and again a dislike for both your first and middle names…a strange happenstance if you had picked them, don't you think?"

Shepard's already unfocused eyes went even more distant. Liara noticed and gently gave her hand another squeeze. "Del…?"

"I didn't mean to bring up something painful," Miranda stated. "It's really none of my business, I was just puzzled by it…"

"It's all right," Shepard replied. "It's…I just haven't thought about it in so long. It's kind of a strange story."

"We have an hour," Liara pointed out. She knew the tale, of course…in somewhat vague terms. She had learned it from the melds, but she was curious to hear it described in Shepard's own words.

"True," Shepard said, then took a deep breath. "Well, it all started with chocolate, truth be told…"

* * *

><p><em>New York Subway System<em>

Curt Orendorff listened to the fading rumble of the Broadway train and the flutter of litter that stirred up in its wake, and sighed. He could spend weeks cleaning the platform until it sparkled, and yet somehow the train always managed to spread garbage all over it again…as if it shed old cigarette butts and wadded wrappers like a dog shed its fur.

"Something wrong, Jeff?"

Curt couldn't help the smile. For ten years, the old man had been coming to the 15th street station at seven am precisely, Monday through Saturday. He sat on the same bench, positioned so the warm air from one of the outflow vents spilled over him, tag-teaming with his dusty old coat to keep his arthritis in check no matter how frigid the weather. He would open up his lap console display and read the news feeds and sip his coffee for exactly one hour, until the eight am train for Newark pulled in to the station.

They shared a friendly enough banter, he and the old man. Fellow had to be a hundred and twenty if he was a day but he was still working…at least, Curt _assumed_ where he went every day save Sunday was work. They never talked too much of personal things, keeping their chats light. However, though he had reminded the old man a thousand times his name was actually Curt…the fellow insisted on calling him 'Jeff'.

"Just lamenting the breeding practices of refuse and filth," Curt answered with a smirk. "How are your old bones doing this morning?"

"Oh, not too bad, not too bad," came the answer. Watery blue eyes lost in a map of wrinkles flickered back down to the newsfeed hovering holographically over his lap. "Looks like colony futures are up again."

"Good news," Curt commented, guiding his hover-sweeper over the new layer of filth that had been strewn around. For the moment, the platform was more or less empty of any save them, though in twenty minutes the crowds would start gathering for the Newark train. "You got family out on the colonies, don't you?"

"Grandson," the man snorted. "Goddamn little punk, thinks he's a pioneer."

Even given his words, his affection and pride came through. Curt knew better. The old man complained about everything having to do with his grandkid, but one didn't have to look too closely to see the adoration that was truly there.

"Kids think they know everything don't they?" Curt humored. The old man snorted, continuing to read his news and sip his coffee.

Curt focused on his work, but every few moments he could hear the old man mumbling to himself. It puzzled him a little…fellow was old but he was still sharp as a tack. He'd never heard him talk to himself before.

Glancing over curiously he saw nothing amiss, just him there with his newsfeed, reading intently and occasionally mumbling this word or that.

_Maybe his eyesight is getting worse. Didn't he have new opticals put in a few years back?_

With a shrug of his big shoulders, he continued cleaning up until the crowd grew too much. Parking his sweeper he took a break, fetching his own cup of coffee as he heard the warning horn for the Newark train. As it drew into the station and the crowds started to file onboard, he watched the old man close down his newsfeed and rise.

Then a confused frown wrinkled Curt's brow. The old man reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a chocolate bar. Carefully, almost meticulously, he set it on the back of the bench, then turned and joined the remnants of the mass of bodies moving onto the train. Just before he boarded he saw Curt staring at him, and waved.

"Have a good day, Jeff!" he called.

"Uh…you too, Mr. Shepard!" Curt called back. The old man vanished into the train, and the doors slid closed, the warning horn blaring a moment before it slid out of the station…shedding litter once more all over the platform.

"Huh," Curt shook his head, finishing off his coffee even as he glanced back at the now empty bench…just in time to see a little hand slid back into the heating vent, the chocolate bar tightly clasped in its fingers.

* * *

><p>Scooting rapidly back through the vent, the little girl reached the distant junction and tucked her knees up to her chest, turning the thick chocolate bar over in her grimy fingers before tearing open the wrapper. Taking a huge bite the moment the confection was bare her eyes rolled back in bliss, cheeks bulging. As fast as she ate, the heat of the vent still had time to soften the chocolate enough that by the time the last chunk vanished into her mouth, her lips and fingers were coated in melted brown.<p>

Uttering happy grunts, the child licked the silver inner wrapper clean with desperate sweeps of her tongue, at times even sucking the foil into her mouth until every iota of sweet was gone from it. Then she tossed it aside, and set to licking her fingers.

"Today tha tempa'ture will reach fiffy two dagrees in Manhattan," she sing-songed to herself as she licked. "Tha Mets zero-gee team claim-ed full vicory ovah-"

"Hello?"

The voice echoed through the vent, startling her. In a heartbeat she was on her hands and knees, staring wide-eyed along the shaft toward the vent she had left only a few minutes before. A face darkened it, the voice recognizable as that of the man that swept the platform.

"Hello?" he called again. "Hey, it's all right. I don't want to hurt you. Can you come out?"

The girl's wide brown eyes stared over cheeks grimy with sweat, dirt, and smears of chocolate. A breath later, she was gone.

* * *

><p>"Hello?" Curt tried again. He could not see very well into the vent but thought he could make out a distant shape. A heartbeat later it almost seemed to vanish, and he sighed.<p>

Kids. He knew they lived in these vents. Not many…but they were there. Small orphans, the children of the homeless, seeking out the warmth, the security. Some were nearly feral.

Every once in a while the workers in the subway system caught one as they emerged to raid the garbage cans. If they could detain them they turned them over to Child Services. On rarer, more sadder occasions they ended up taking a tiny body off the hover-track system, another little life claimed by the barreling trains.

Over the next two years he saw the same scenario played out over and over again. The old man took up his usual spot, read his usual newsfeeds with the occasional mumble, and when he departed he invariably left a chocolate bar on the back of the bench. Curt found if he glanced away for so much as an instant, the bar would completely vanish. It was only rarely he was able to catch sight of the tiny hand that reached out and snagged it.

* * *

><p>The girl was eleven and the vents were growing smaller. Edging her way forward on elbows she reached the grate just at the same moment that the old man sat down.<p>

"Good morning," he murmured.

She said nothing, her dark brown eyes intent as he opened his newsfeed. The projector sitting on his lap, the holographic display hovered at his eye level…and just below hers.

"Looks like the Mets won again," he commented.

She grinned, squinting at the words scrolling past. "Corporal Derek Octavuss-"

"Octavius," he corrected gently.

"Octavius was post…_posthumously_ awarded the Medal of Valor for his actions in saving the lives of four of his fellow crew mates."

"Very good."

She grinned, continuing to read the articles over his shoulder, occasionally being corrected when she couldn't quite get a word right. Just before his usual train arrived he switched over to a comic feed. He liked hearing her giggle at the cartoons. Her stomach sank almost sadly when she heard the approaching of his train whistle.

"Time for me to go, my friend," he murmured to her as he rose. As was usual, his knotted fingers moved into his jacket and he withdrew a bar of chocolate, setting it just within reach on the back of the bench. As he started away to join those boarding, the girl cleared her throat. For the first time in their strange little relationship, she called after him.

"Thank you!"

He paused, looking back at the vent. Through the mesh, his watery blue eyes met hers, and ever so slightly, he nodded, a smile appearing. Then he was gone, shuffling off toward the Newark train.

Unclasping the vent her hand snaked out and grabbed the bar of chocolate as she heard the janitor call after the old man with a final "Have a good day, Mr. Shepard!"

* * *

><p><em>Normandy, Present Day<em>

Silence reigned for a moment, before Liara tentatively spoke. "He taught you how to read."

"Yeah," Shepard replied. "I had been looking over his shoulder for weeks before he knew I was there, trying to make sense of the writing. I was determined to figure it out myself though of course…I really had no idea how to even begin to make sense of the letters and symbols. One day I guess my frustration got the better of me and he heard me in the vent, talking to myself as I struggled to solve this unbreakable mystery. He…started to read out loud to me. Would point at the words to help me follow along and after a few days I would start trying to sound out ones I recognized. He'd correct me if I got it wrong. Sometimes he'd tell me stories about his family…what they were doing. He had a grandson out on a colony. He had two sons, one of which had passed away. He had to explain that to me…I didn't know what passed away meant. He mentioned once that he wished he had a daughter, because 'boys only see such a narrow view, black and white and sometimes gray. Girls got to see _all _the colors'. After a while, he started leaving me the chocolate bars. Most days, it was the only food I had."

"He never called Child Services? Never tried to get you out of the vent, get you some help?" Miranda asked.

"Oh, I don't know if he called them or not. They came through on occasion. There were several orphans that lived in the subways. But what were they going to do? They couldn't come in the vents after us, and short of trapping us like wild animals…which, believe it or not, they actually _did_ do on occasion…their hands were tied. I think he knew if he tried to talk me out I would be gone. The janitor tried a couple of times and once I nearly stopped coming back, because of it. Living in fear is a hard thing…it is especially hard if you're just a child."

"And his name was Shepard," Liara murmured.

"Yeah. Never knew his first name. He was always just Mr. Shepard. He was the first nice person I ever actually talked to. The first person that made me realize that there was more out in life than just a selfish scrabble for survival. That was a Monday, the last time I saw him, when I said thank you. I came back on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, but he didn't show up. On Thursday I saw a chocolate bar sitting on the back of the bench but no sign of Mr. Shepard. After I picked it up and took it back in the vent, the janitor came over and talked to me through the grate again. He didn't try and coax me out this time, he just said, 'I'm sorry, but Mr. Shepard passed away in Newark on Monday night. I saw it in the obituaries.'"

Shepard blinked, her unseeing eyes still fixed on the ceiling. "I never went back to that vent."

She felt Liara's grip on her hand tighten again, and fought the urge to shrug. "He was old," Shepard said after a moment. "He is my first good memory…him and that chocolate, and I think that would make him proud…being a good memory, I mean. It just seemed like thanking him all over again, I suppose…using his name."

"That explains your last name," Miranda commented after a moment of silence. "What about your first, and your middle?"

Shepard grimaced, then chuckled. "Stupid fucking luck. First time I got arrested was for stealing some pizza down near the botanical gardens in Central Park. Wasn't even _good_ pizza. Blue Shirt nabbed me…big fucker. Hand went clear around my arm without even stretching. He did a ident scan but of course I didn't have an ident, so he demanded my name. Shook me so hard my teeth rattled and I was terrified beyond belief. Kicked him four times in the shins but couldn't get away. There are bad stories about the Blue Shirts among the homeless in New York. Some said that they took kids off the streets but instead of putting them in the system they sold them to black market slavers. I was afraid he was either going to kill me or ship me off to be some rich asshole's new sex toy. So when he shook me again I told him my name was Shepard.

"His partner had shown up by then…just as big and just as much of an asshole. He put in the search for the last name and demanded my first name. Of course, I didn't have one but, you know…no one misses the homeless and especially _not_ the nameless ones. I was so frantic at that point I blurted out the first thing that came to mind."

She smirked. "Remember I said this was by the botanical gardens? They had a huge sign advertising a rare species of tree that had just been introduced. I caught sight of that sign just before I blurted out what it read…and I ended up tagged with that stupid goddamn ident for the rest of my life."

Her eyes rolled over toward Liara. "You should see pictures of it though. _Ugly_ fucking tree. The Silver Delilah Spruce…looks like a goddamn toilet brush. My fucking luck."

* * *

><p>"Ok, sit up easy," Miranda urged, Liara's hand on Shepard's back as she moved up into a sit. She felt the Australian fiddling at her collar. "Ok. I'm going to switch the squealer on. You may have some initial dizziness, but there shouldn't be any pain."<p>

"Gotcha. Hit me."

There was a click, and then suddenly an image seemed to flash in front of her eyes. She knew it wasn't really happening that way, the visual center being stimulated directly, but it was hard to mesh seeing via some other means than the natural.

Barely a heartbeat passed before the image flashed again, then again. Miranda was right, it was like a strobe light in a dark room. Everything was the black and white of an infrared scanner but she could make out most details. Waving her hand around in front of her face a moment, enjoying the effect, she then turned her head and looked at Liara, grinning as she reached up and touched her face.

"You are _still_ the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

* * *

><p>Her fingers as graceful as any painter, Navis almost seemed to make the bottle float as she lifted it and tipped it once again to Sydney's glass, filling it for the fourth time before refreshing her own. "It is not really this drell that is upsetting you," she stated, setting the bottle down.<p>

"Isn't it?" Sydney asked bitterly. Her blonde hair hung in curtains around her face, and she brushed it back with irritation, knocking back half of the booze without even tasting it.

"No, I do not think so," the asari replied. "Had the batarians not hired him to kill young Mr. Blumenthal, they would simply have hired someone else. Theirs was the mind, his was simply the hand."

"Yeah, that's the excuse that fucker made too," Sydney glowered. "Sometimes you gotta take responsibility for the shit you sow, Deeds. His finger squeezed the goddamn trigger, no one else's."

"This is not why you are angry," the asari pressed. Leaning back elegantly in her seat, one arm draped over the back as casually as if she were at any elite resort or restaurant, she held her drink up to her lips and regarded the blonde human over the rim of the glass. "You are not mad that Carl died."

"Oh, please share with me your wisdom, Matriarch," the human said bitterly.

"I do not have to be a Matriarch to know what is in your heart, Syd," Navis said calmly. "You are not angry that Carl died. He was crude, ignorant, selfish, stupid and dangerous to all those around him. He made his own bed and he paid the price for his own sins. You are angry because this all made _you_ feel helpless."

Sydney scowled, swirling the remnants of her drink around in her glass. Navis tilted her head slightly.

"You failed, that is what it comes down to. You were not all-seeing or all-knowing enough to predict that bullet. You were not fast enough to catch his assassin and you failed to track him down after over a year. It is not that this Thane killed him, it is that this Thane ended up trying your skills to the limits and for the first time in your life…you failed at something."

Sydney drained the glass and slapped it down onto the table, before rising. The tank top she wore did not hide the cording of her muscles beneath the tattoos that lined her back as she lifted her arms, threading her hands behind her neck and lowering her head.

"You are angry because I speak the truth?" Navis asked. When Sydney said nothing, Navis set her glass aside and got to her feet. Unfastening her black velvet jacket, she slipped it off and draped it neatly over the back of her chair. Beneath it she wore a silk wrap shirt, its tailoring and fabric every bit as perfect and expensive as her other clothing. Navis might be a pureblood, but her family was one of the richest on Thessia, and she showed no shame in displaying it.

Stepping over behind Sydney she reached up and took her wrists, firmly forcing the hands to part and drawing her arms down to her sides as she stood, her front flush with the blonde's back.

"What are you doing?" Sydney grumped, but Navis noticed she did not fight her.

"Truth should never upset you, my friend," Navis murmured in her ear. "In this galaxy, there are always those faster, stronger, more skilled. This is what drives us forward…this is the meaning of our existence. To push ourselves, to grow. If we are defeated, we only lose if we do not _learn_ from the defeat."

Sydney felt goose-bumps rise over her arms at every stir of Navis's breath over her ear. The other woman was still holding her wrists down at her sides, but not so firmly that Sydney could not easily break away from her.

_She's telling the truth, you know she is. You are angry because he one-upped you, nothing more. You spent eighteen months running blind through the galaxy seeking vengeance…not for Carl, but for your own wounded pride. God, does she have to stand so close?_

"Did you read that out of a fortune cookie?" Sydney asked wryly. Navis's lips were hovering so close to her ear, she could feel it when the woman smiled.

"Earth humor, how droll," she cooed. "Some of us are just smart, Sydney."

"As opposed to the _rest_ of us," Sydney chuckled.

"Oh, I think you are intelligent enough…" Navis murmured, and the lightest press of her lips came against the side of Sydney's neck. She released the human woman's wrists, her hands taking her waist instead.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Sydney asked softly.

"As I said, you are intelligent enough…what does it feel like?"

"You're…drunk…"Sydney muttered, her eyes fluttering closed despite herself as the asari planted another soft kiss on the side of her neck.

"No," Navis smiled. "_I _am sober…_you_ are drunk. I am merely taking advantage of the fact."

This struck Sydney as supremely funny and she laughed, hearing the asari's answering chuckle in her ear as her arms slid around her waist. "It has been too long since I have heard that sound," Navis lamented.

"Well, if you didn't stay _away_ so much," Sydney chided gently.

"The price of fame and fortune, my dear…though it is tiring being in constant demand the galaxy wide…having to dodge or indulge my legions of adoring fans-"

"_Indulge_?" Sydney huffed, turning to face the asari, who looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

"Of course," Navis replied with a smile. "You can only fight them off so long before they simply insist upon ravishing you-"

"Oh _really_?" Sydney gaped, then shoved the asari lightly backward. Catching her thighs on the back of the chair the blonde had occupied only a few minutes before, Navis sat down. Sydney's omni-tool ignited as she remotely locked the door, then skinned off her tank top and threw it aside. Straddling the asari's lap she dipped her lips in close to Navis's and smiled. "Let me remind you why I'm _better_ than all of them combined, Deeds."

"I am prepared to be amazed," Navis cooed.

"Less talking," Sydney murmured before dipping in for a kiss. "More ravishing…"


	46. Chapter 46

A/N: Warning! Shmexy in the middle!

It's like…no shmexy, and then shmexy, and then no shmexy again. Like a sandwich. An awesome shmexy sandwich.

* * *

><p>Shepard switched off the squealer with a grunt, flopping back on the bed. Impenetrable black fell over her vision again but it was more a blanket of relief than alarm.<p>

Miranda had warned her it might be annoying, but that wasn't even approaching the truth of it. Once the initial wonder had worn off (which had taken about five minutes), Shepard found herself first irritated, then completely disgruntled with the whole mess.

Forget the fact the image was only black and white. Forget that it flashed repeatedly like a hyperactive camera, very swiftly giving her a headache. All that, she could handle. What was the most discombobulating was that the image was not really _directional_. As it relied on ultrasonic echoes instead of the aim of her eyes, each flash gave her a unique three hundred and sixty degree view. She could literally see in every direction…in front, behind, up, down, left right, sideways.

Liara had ended up helping her to walk just to the lift and back to her room. It was amazing how hard walking was when you were seeing both in front and behind at the same time. It was nearly impossible for her to maintain her balance and closing her eyes, of course, didn't help in the slightest.

Flopped back on her bed, once more submerged in the now comforting dark of sightlessness, Shepard felt a tug at her boot.

"Taking advantage of an invalid?" she joked.

Liara said nothing, casting the boot to the floor, and then drawing off the second one. It landed beside the first with a thump. A moment later the bed creaked faintly as Liara climbed upon it. The asari settled at her side, wrapping Del in a hug even as she rest her head on her shoulder.

Shepard wound her own arm around the asari, holding her close. Liara didn't have to speak. Shepard knew what was on her mind. She had nearly died again…actually _had_ died, for a few moments. If not for Tali's quick thinking…

_How much more pain will you end up putting Liara through? One mission, and you end up dead, remote-controlled, and then blind. _

"I'm sorry," she murmured after a moment. Liara snuggled in a little more. As Shepard knew her so well, so, too, did Liara know the human woman. She did not need to ask what the apology was for.

"You would think I would be used to this by now," Liara whispered instead. "This will…it will never end, will it?"

"Yes, it _will_," Shepard insisted. "I gotta hope for that, Tianlán. I gotta hope for something."

"You will always fight. It is what you do, who you are," Liara told her. "I need to accept that if we are going to make this work."

Brows knitting, Shepard shifted a little onto her side. She could not see the asari's face of course, but she faced her nonetheless. Almost unconsciously the two women twined their legs together as had become their habit.

"I will do anything you ask of me," Shepard whispered to her. "Li, I'd go to the edges of the galaxy and hog-tie a Reaper, drag it back to you if you asked me for one."

The asari chuckled faintly, her fingers lightly tracing Del's cheek. "And if I asked you to forget the Reapers? To leave everything behind, to run away with me to the edges of the galaxy…?"

"Would you ask me that?" Shepard replied, knowing better.

"No," Liara admitted. "There would be no peace then, either. The Reapers would eventually find us just as they would find everyone else. Goddess…the thought of losing you frightens me to death, Shepard. I cannot imagine how I was ever complete without you in my life. However, I know what you said earlier is correct. Even if there were no threat of Collectors or Reapers…this galaxy simply is not safe, and neither of us can predict the future."

"We make our _own_ future," Shepard told her. "If this galaxy has taught me nothing else, it's that. I want this to be a safe place for us…for our family. I know it'll never be perfect and there will always be dangers but…I want to give them a chance to _be_, give them a chance to grow up."

"Shepard," Liara sounded mildly surprised. "I thought you were unsure about having daughters."

"I was…I-I still am," Shepard admitted. "I still think having me as a parent will scar any of them for life, probably in horribly unimaginable ways-"

"Pah!" Liara lightly pinched her arm, and Shepard smiled.

"If it _does_ happen, though…I may be the worst parent to have ever existed so…I want to give them _something_. If all I can give them is a safer galaxy and hope for the future then…that's what I'll do."

Liara nuzzled in and kissed her lightly, hand brushing over her hair. "Shepard…you are amazing and you do not even see it. Any daughter would be so proud to call you her parent, and I…could not imagine sharing a child with anyone else."

Shepard could not see, but she knew for certain that Liara had blushed at that. She leaned forward a little, kissing her again. "What did I do to deserve you?" she murmured.

"That is a very good question," Liara teased with a faint giggle, and Shepard grinned. As she kissed her again, she could feel the asari's fingers slide into the fringe of her hair…and then pause.

"Shepard…what is this?" Liara asked, having felt a tiny smooth patch. Shepard blinked, reaching her own hand up before she remembered.

"Oh, that's nothing…just a little green."

"A…a what?" Liara asked.

"It's a medication patch," Shepard told her. "A lot of marines wear them. It prevents flashbacks."

"Flashbacks?" Liara sat up on her elbow, leaning over as she parted the hair to peer at the tiny green patch. "You have been having flashbacks?"

"I had a couple…wasn't any big deal," she shrugged. "Like I said, most marines wear them. They're perfectly safe and it's a hell of a lot better than suddenly losing your mind in the middle of a firefight."

Liara made a faint, weary, lamenting sound, and Shepard drew her back down again, winding her arms around her. "It's fine," she insisted again. "I've had PTSD a very long time. It's practically a requirement in the Alliance military."

Liara sighed. "It is official. I simply cannot let you out of my sight, ever again."

"Aww," Shepard grinned. "Promise?"

Barley had the kiss rejoined then suddenly the com chimed. Shepard groaned faintly, reluctantly drawing back a little as she called out, "Yes?"

_{Commander, sorry to bother you,}_ Kelly stated. _{You have a message from Admiral Hackett, ma'am…I really think you should see it.}_

"Hackett?" Shepard murmured in puzzlement. The two women sat up as Shepard fumbled for her squealer, switching it back on. The room suddenly flashed into her vision again, as disconcertingly panoramic as before. Liara rose as well, swiftly catching hold of Shepard's arm as she weaved her way over to her console, logging in.

Grimacing at the holographic screen she sighed in frustration as she realized she could not actually read it…the whole image was static white, since holographs did not bounce sound waves back. Reaching up she snapped off her squealer with an irritated flick of her finger.

"This goddamn thing is useless. Tianlán, can you read it to me?"

Liara shifted closer as she leaned over to read.

"Commander Shepard," she began, "I received this communication address from Councilor Anderson. He was able to fill me in on your unique…situation, and that you were reinstated to your Spectre status by the Citadel Council."

She paused a moment, then her voice softened a little. "It is good to know you are still alive, and I wanted to affirm that you still have friends in the Alliance. That being said, I would like to extend an invitation. Shortly after the _Normandy_ went down, we located her wreckage on Alchera. At the time the planet's territorial rights were being disputed and we could not obtain permission for a salvage operation. Now, I am happy to say, the volus have secured their water and carbon extraction rights to the planet and will allow us access. They have also, rather unexpectedly, requested that the remains stay undisturbed as a memorial of the incident. It seems, Shepard, that you're rather popular among the volus in the Terminus. As always, you make allies in the strangest of places. We have agreed to their request, and a small ceremony will be held on Alchera the day after tomorrow. We would like your attendance if possible. The volus have granted you permission to tour the wreckage, and a memorial plaque will be put into place."

Shepard lowered her head, unseeing eyes even more distant as Liara concluded. "I hope you are able to attend. I know your work is important but…if nothing else, it will be good to see you again. Keep safe out there, and we look forward to having you back home. Best regards, Admiral Steven Hackett."

The _Normandy_. Shepard felt…she wasn't entirely sure _what_ it was she felt. Hackett's expression of support meant everything to her. Like Anderson, she had always looked up to the man, respected him and his ideals. He had become something of a mentor and confidante over the years.

However visiting the _Normandy_'s wreck meant returning to the place where she had died…the place where her world and life had been _completely_ torn apart.

"What will you do?" Liara asked softly, her hand resting on Shepard's upper arm. The commander lowered her head slightly, then raked her hair back from her face.

"Will you stay?" she asked quietly.

"Of course," Liara replied. Shepard nodded once, then lifted her head.

"Open com. Joker, set a course for Alchera and give me a trip-time ETA."

_{Aye Commander…we're looking at…about thirty hours.}_

"Do it. Shepard out."

_{Aye ma'am.}_

As the com switched off, Shepard turned and wrapped her arms around Liara, hugging her tightly.

* * *

><p>Blue fingers lightly traced the outline of a hibiscus flower drawn in colorful pigmentation over the slope of a shoulder blade. Half asleep, Sydney peered blearily up at the asari from under a lock of honey blonde hair.<p>

"You like the new one?" she mumbled, face half-buried in a pillow.

"It is very delicate," Navis approved. "And it blends in well with the others. What is this flower called?"

"Hibiscus," Sydney mumbled. "It's native to Earth."

"Remind me some day to show you a bloom of asari yellow death."

"You have a flower called 'yellow death?'" Sydney asked.

"Oh yes," Navis purred, continuing to trace along the lines of her tattoos. "It is the most beautiful of blooms…blue along the edges, deepening to black at the center. It is said to catch sight of the flower at the same time as another causes the pair to fall eternally in love."

Sydney grunted a laugh. "If it's pretty and blue, why is it called the 'yellow death?'"

Navis smiled, leaning over a little and planting a gentle kiss in the center of the hibiscus marking. "Its thorns are poisonous," she murmured, tracing her teeth and lips lightly over the skin until she could see Sydney's flesh prickling. "If you attempt to pick one without protection, you will be pricked and become very ill. The bloom itself, when dried and crushed, mixes invisibly and tastelessly into drink and causes swift death. Very shortly after the victim succumbs to it, the whites of her eyes turn a vibrant and startling yellow…and so its name."

Sydney's eyes closed as Navis traced her lips over her tattoo, uttering a happy little sigh. "You know, you are the only person I know who tries to romance by talking about poisons and death."

"Is that what I'm doing?" Navis teased. "Romancing? I thought this was just another tumble, my dear. I'm afraid I've even already forgotten your name-"

Sydney uttered a squawk of pretend indignation, rolling and pushing the asari onto her back. "Is that so? I-"

She was cut off as her omni-tool suddenly beeped. With a faint eye-roll she noted the caller. A flower appeared hovering over the display.

"Conroy," Sydney chuckled. Grinning evilly, Navis half sat up and began biting lightly at the side of the human woman's neck.

"A flower? Should I be jealous? Is Joseph vying to take my place?"

"Joseph flirts with _everyone_, you know that," Sydney told her, then activated the connection -audio only- as Navis continued to try and distract her.

"What is it, Conroy?" Sydney asked with a smirk. "I'm in the middle of having wild sex with Navis, you know."

"_And you didn't invite me?"_ Joseph faked sounding wounded, then laughed. _"Hello, Deirdre."_

"Hello, Joseph," Deeds called back.

"Hurry it up would you? I have an asari to conquer," Sydney giggled.

"_Just wanted to pass on that the first of the supplies are arriving and we should be ready to start on that new gun within the next couple of hours."_

"Understood. We'll be out…uh…eventually."

"_Don't hurry on my account,"_ he laughed. _"Now I'm off to check on the inventory list and take about four cold showers. My heart is forever broken, Syd, I just want you to know that!"_

"Uh huh, how tragic, enjoy your shower," Sydney replied quickly, then switched off the omni-tool, pushing Navis back on the bed with a switchblade grin. "Now…where were we?"

* * *

><p>Liara sat in the mess, stirring a cup of tea and occasionally glancing toward the infirmary door. Chakwas and Mordin had worked for several hours the previous day on poor David, delicately removing the implants and repairing the damage caused by his brother's hubris. He was still unconscious as far as she knew…and another surgery was going to be performed this evening to continue the work after he'd had a chance to stabilize a bit.<p>

Right now, Chakwas was taking a much needed nap while Mordin and Miranda replaced Shepard's damaged eyes with the newly-calibrated cybernetic ones.

_I am glad that she is still having another pair of her own cloned_, she thought to herself, staring into the depths of her tea. She loved Shepard's eyes. The way they remained unwavering when she issued an order, the way they narrowed when she decided a course of action and set her stubbornness to the fore. Most of all, Liara loved the way they softened and seemed to melt when Shepard looked at her. So many unspoken words were in that deep brown gaze. They were a window to a world that most people would never be honored enough to see.

Mordin had assured them both that he was nearly finished with a counter-measure that would not only adjust the nanites in a way so as not to cause Shepard debilitating pain when confronted with the mysterious Harbinger's voice, but also to prevent any sort of AI or hacking attempt from ever occurring again, no matter how sophisticated the technology.

Liara tried not to see the memory of Shepard's brightly glowing emerald eyes in her mind, taking a sip of her tea before someone suddenly sat down in front of her. The motion was not casual or gentle, but was rather pointed with a sharp scoot of a chair, the drop of weight into it.

She glanced up to see an unfamiliar human woman straddling the now backward chair. Her head was shaved, and the arms draping over the back of the seat she had claimed were thickly tattooed. Liara could see similar tattoos on the side of her neck, and even one or two on her bare head.

She was small, but lovely enough. She smelled of cigarettes and engine grease, but unlike the pleasant autumnal tinge of Del's cigars, the woman clearly indulged in cheap tobacco smokes that left a darker, more bitter aroma.

After a single blink, she realized who this must be. Jack…the biotic Shepard had taken from that hell of a prison. She had mentioned her a few times but the woman rarely ventured outside of her sub-deck hidey hole, and as a result they had not met.

Before Liara could speak, the ex-con jerked her chin a little. "You're that asari," she stated. "The commander's girl."

"I am Liara T'Soni," she replied politely. "The…commander and I are _involved_, yes. You are…Jack?"

The woman gave another jerk of her chin, uttering a faint grunt that Liara took to mean an affirmative. Feeling a little awkward, Liara cleared her throat a bit.

"Are you…enjoying your time on the _Normandy_?" she asked.

The biotic snorted. "Beats fucking jail," she replied. "And I get to hit shit, so…yeah. I like it well enough."

Liara couldn't help the faint smile. Jack sounded like Shepard. "She has told me some about you," she admitted. Jack's eyebrow arched and her jaw tensed as she sat back a little. Liara immediately recognized the posture as being defensive.

"Oh yeah?" Jack asked.

"Yes," Liara replied. "She likes you a great deal, I think. I could hear admiration when she spoke of you."

Jack looked wary. "The fuck you did."

There was a time when a woman like Jack would have intimidated her completely. However Liara had faced far more frightening things in the last couple of years than a bitter human biotic.

"I did," Liara repeated. "I suppose she identifies with you. I can see why. You both have the same…inner fire, I suppose. You are both fighters."

Jack gave her that wary look again, but said nothing for a few moments. Liara quietly sipped her tea, her eyes lifting toward her companion again when Jack cleared her throat.

"You known her a long time, then?" the ex-con ventured.

"Two and a half years…give or take," Liara replied.

"She surprised me," Jack told her. "I can't figure her out."

"There are few like her," Liara agreed. "Though sadly I must say, I have ceased being surprised by her…no. No, that is not quite it. I have become _accustomed_ to being surprised by her, is more what I mean."

"Really?" Jack grunted. "So _nothing_ I tell you about her will surprise you?"

"I highly doubt it."

"I kissed her," Jack answered as if tossing down a challenge. Liara looked at her, then lifted her tea again, taking another calm sip before lowering it.

"I am guessing about four seconds passed before she put you on the ground," she stated. Jack blinked.

"What makes you think she did _that_?"

"I know her," Liara replied simply. When Jack said nothing she lifted a brow. "So…four seconds?"

"More like two," Jack admitted. "I thought that's what she fucking wanted, you know? Everyone in this goddamn galaxy wants something. No one's 'nice'. There's always a price, sooner or later. I like knowing what it is up front. Gives me the advantage. I thought I finally had her figured…but it just pissed her off."

"If Del wants something from you, Jack, she will tell you. She does not play games."

"All she's told me is she wants my help with the mission, that's it. That's bullshit. She doesn't need to be buddy buddy for that."

"What is it you wish me to say?" Liara asked.

"Fuck, I don't know," Jack huffed. "No one's just ever been…_nice _to me."

"Then you have been meeting a very poor selection of people," Liara replied. Jack actually blinked, then barked a laugh.

"Ain't _that _the fucking truth."

"Jack, I will not pretend to know everything about you. I know only that you have experienced a lot of pain, a lot of anger. You have become understandably suspicious of people, defensive. You have learned to protect yourself. I can, however, tell you this. Whether you like her or not, whether you trust her or not, you are part of Shepard's crew, and if it comes down to it, she will put her life on the line to protect yours."

"_Why_?" Jack wanted to know, a scowl on her face.

Liara looked down into her tea, resigned. "You may as well ask a star why it burns, or the wind why it blows. It is who she is, and nothing will ever change it."

* * *

><p>"All right, Shepard, how does that feel?" Miranda asked, a finger lightly drifting over the edge of the other woman's eyelid.<p>

"A…little tender," she answered. "Like they're bruised, but not too bad."

"That tenderness should go away in a few hours," Miranda told her. "All right. Brace yourself. I'm going to activate the implants now. You'll hear a momentary buzz, and might get a sensation of vertigo. Let me know instantly if there is any pain whatsoever."

"Ok," Shepard replied. She heard Miranda pick up some kind of tool, then the faintest buzz sounded before the dark suddenly vanished, leaping into full color around her.

She blinked, then blinked again, the sudden rush disorienting for a split second. Miranda set aside the tool in her hand and peered intently into Shepard's face. "Can you see me?"

"Yeah," Shepard grinned. "Full color and everything."

"You'll notice everything has a bit of an…_effect_ to it. Unfortunately, even the most advanced cybernetic eyes can't compete perfectly with the real thing."

Shepard nodded, looking around. She did indeed notice a faint effect, as Miranda had called it. It was as if she were in the midst of an incredibly life-like 3D projection instead of actual reality. For a moment she thought if she looked closely enough at an object she'd be able to see its pixels, and nearly chuckled at the idea.

"No pain?" Miranda asked.

"None," Shepard told her. "Can…I see them?"

"Of course."

Miranda straightened and accepted a mirror as Mordin offered it, clearly having anticipated the request. Shepard accepted it, then peered curiously at her own image within.

The lids of her eyes were slightly reddened. To be expected, of course, after having major surgery to remove her own eyes. She looked like she'd been crying for a while, or had a bit of an allergy attack.

It was strange, however, to see her own face and not see the familiar dark, brooding brown gazing back at her.

The implants were notably different than normal human eyes. The 'whites' had a silvery sheen to them, faint but obviously artificial. The irises of the implants were dark gold and marred by four pupils on each eye. The center pupil shifted and narrowed almost like a camera's lens, and it was surrounded by three tinier pupils in a triangular shape, which helped with depth perception and color balance. Each pupil was ringed with dark crimson, the apertures of the pupils themselves faintly luminescent with blood red.

"I look demonic," she noted, then smirked at the idea, watching the way the iris and pupils shifted and moved, sometimes even completely rotating to one side or the other as the electronics altered focus.

"Your cloned replacements should be ready in a few weeks," Miranda told her. "Unless you'd like to just keep these and continue looking…_demonic_."

Shepard laughed. "_Tempting_…but no. My baby browns are my best feature."

"Unlikely," Mordin replied. "Human females, best feature tends to be hair, followed closely by shape of gluteal muscle groups and mammary-"

"Mordin!" Miranda snapped, making the salarian blink.

"What? Incorrect? Doubtful. Did years of research, different species find different traits desirable. Humans almost galactically prefer-"

"I know what humans 'galactically' prefer, Mordin," Miranda interrupted again.

"Simply stating facts. Shepard's gluteal muscles nicely formed and-"

"_Please_ stop talking about my ass," Shepard told him sternly as Miranda gaped at him.

Mordin blinked again. "Oh. Right. Forgot. Humans touchy on subject of secondary sex characteristics and specifics of biological imperative to mate. Fascinating. Wonder if there is a similar aversion to other biological functions? Urination, defecation-"

"Mordin, I _will_ surgically remove your tongue!" Miranda threatened as Shepard started laughing. The salarian blinked again.

"Ah. Answers that. Well. Have other work to do. Can discuss oddity of human foibles at a later time."

As Mordin left, Shepard grinned at Miranda, still chuckling. The brunette scowled a bit, before cracking a smile in response. "Sometimes I can't tell if that man is actually joking or completely serious," she admitted.

"I vote joking," Shepard told her. "I think Mordin's just got a unique sense of humor. I find that more comforting an idea than him staring at my ass as part of a study on the 'secondary sex characteristics of alien species'."

Miranda chuckled again, shaking her head. "Well, if you're feeling steady enough you're free to go. We should be in orbit of Alchera in about an hour."

Shepard nodded, but as she got to her feet, her XO's expression turned to one of concern. "Shepard…are you _sure _you want to do this? See the old _Normandy_, I mean? That can't be an easy thing to face."

"Nothing about life is easy," Shepard replied. "Or death. A part of me needs to see it, I think. Get some closure, clear my head. That's what I'm hoping, anyway."

Miranda nodded, then put her hand on her commander's shoulder a moment, before letting it drop away again. "Just…let me know if you have any problem with the implants, all right?"

"I will," Shepard smiled, then headed for the infirmary door.

If nothing else, it was a relief not to be seeing in flashes or with that strange disorienting panoramic view.

As she left the infirmary she immediately spotted Liara in the mess…and she was talking to Jack? A bit surprised, she headed that direction, the asari swiftly catching sight of her. Immediately Liara rose to her feet and strode over, peering at her curiously.

"Well, what do you think?" Shepard asked with a smile.

"I…they are…_interesting_," Liara commented, looking unsure. "I think I much prefer your natural eyes, however."

"Yeah, me too," Shepard agreed, then shrugged. "Still. They beat that awful fucking squealer, that's for damn sure."

"Hey, Shepard. Looking _wicked_," Jack noted from where she was sitting.

"Not all of us are awesome enough for tattoos, Jack…I had to compete somehow," Shepard replied. Jack gave her an odd look, then surprisingly, smiled. It was a bit sarcastic, but a smile nonetheless.

"Ain't that fucking right," Jack agreed. Shepard smirked, then looked at Liara.

"You two having a good talk?"

"Yes," Liara said honestly. "She was telling me about kissing you."

Shepard suddenly coughed, taken by surprise, her newly implanted eyes widening. "She did?"

"Yes," Liara repeated, then smiled. "And I correctly surmised that you knocked her down seconds later."

Shepard rubbed the back of her neck, then gestured helplessly. "Well, since you didn't tie each other into biotic knots I take it you're not mad."

"Why would I be angry?" Liara asked. "I know where your heart lies and…who can blame her?"

"Uh, _yeah_," Shepard replied, then blinked and smirked. "You're teasing me again."

Liara only laughed. Hugging her tightly, Shepard kissed her cheek, then reluctantly loosened her hold. "I have to get up to the CIC. We should be at Alchera within the hour and I'm sure there's a thousand and one things that need my attention. I've been lazy the last couple of days."

"I think nearly dying and losing your eyesight earns you a day or two of rest, Shepard," Liara pointed out.

"Yeah, well…I keep it up and I'm going to lose my girlish figure. You two have a good talk, ok? I'll see you before we go groundside."

"We will," Liara replied, then closed her eyes as Shepard leaned in again and gently kissed her cheek.

"Jesus fuck, get a _room_ or something before I vomit," Jack snorted. Shepard lifted a brow, then grinned. Dramatically flinging her arms around Liara she dipped her low and kissed her deeply. As she swept the surprised asari back upright, Jack huffed.

"God, Shepard! If I get a cavity I'm going to _fuck you up_."

* * *

><p>The achingly blue sky was as chill and sharp as ice, and seemed to crystallize where it joined the horizon. Hackett drew the collar of his thick pea coat closer around his ears as he turned his head, the sound of engines cutting the crisp air.<p>

He fought a grimace as he caught sight of the Cerberus logo on the side of the shuttle. He'd had more than one bad dealing with Cerberus before, up to and including the so called 'mysterious' disappearance of Kahoku.

_Shepard's got a cast-iron gut, being able to stomach working with them, even temporarily_, he thought. Even if Anderson hadn't told him the truth of the matter, Hackett would never have believed for a second that Shepard had defected to Cerberus, willingly or not. Taking advantage of them for their resources in order to help human colonies…that he could easily buy, and if he knew Shepard at all, he knew that when this was said and done with Shepard would do her utmost to hand the Alliance the Illusive Man on a gilt platter.

As the shuttle moved in and settled, the wind from the engines blasted fine snow and ice crystals over the ground, sending them whispering over his boots as he strode forward. When the door lifted, he squinted his eyes, then drew up straight.

Shepard was the first one out, stepping down to the frozen ground with a light hop, gathering her own pea coat around her as the chill struck. Hackett was surprised at the depth of feeling that moved through his chest for a moment at seeing her again.

Hackett wasn't normally an emotional man. He had family…an ex-wife he was still on amicable terms with, a grown son. However like most military men and women it was the people he served with that somehow became his _true_ family, and of them all Shepard was something special.

He still remembered the first time he saw the young recruit, and how she had sacrificed getting the high score on a timed combat run in order to carry a slower team-mate to over the finish line, refusing to let him scrub out because of a broken ankle.

_That's a soldier_, he had thought then, and he thought it again now as she stepped down from shuttle to tundra. She wasn't wearing a uniform, and her standing in the Alliance was in limbo at the moment, but the woman was a soldier through and through. Seeing her again was like seeing a long-lost daughter returning home.

Almost the moment her boots landed on the frozen ground she straightened and snapped a salute. He returned it, then smiled, holding his hand out as he strode forward. She took it and slapped his back lightly as he hugged her.

"It's good to see you again, sir."

"It's good to see you, too," he replied, then nodded politely to the asari that stepped down as well. "Dr. T'Soni."

"Admiral Hackett," she greeted warmly, her breath billowing faintly in the cold air.

"I was under the impression it was summer in this hemisphere of Alchera," Shepard smirked, tucking her hands into the pockets of the coat. "It's a good thing we took Miranda's suggestion and brought winter coats."

"This _is _summer," Hackett smirked. "If it were winter it'd be a hundred degrees colder and the wind would blow you clear off your feet."

Turning, he gestured to the few Alliance soldiers gathered nearby, interspersed with a handful of volus, squat and round in their environmental suits. "The wreckage is about a mile from here. It's in the shelter of a cliff-side which is why those winds haven't scattered it to all the four corners of this godforsaken place. It's half-frozen into the tundra now and nothing save a major disaster, or major _explosives_, is ever going to move it again. I was surprised when the volus expressed interest in preserving it and turning it into a memorial."

"I'm a bit surprised myself," Shepard answered. "I don't recall what I could have done to make such an impression with the volus."

"Well, you do intend to leave an impression wherever you go," Hackett said. "The mining company that has resource rights to this planet is headed by that fellow there. He and his son made the trip down just to meet you and attend the ceremony."

Hackett pointed out a pair of volus standing near a crawler, even as they headed that direction. As they approached, the two caught sight of them and started their direction as well.

"Commander Shepard," the first greeted, offering his hand up. His voice was deep, dignified…but unfamiliar. "It is my honor to finally meet you."

"The honor is mine," Shepard replied, taking the hand and shaking it. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage…?"

"I am sorry, I have heard so much about you I felt as if we were old friends already. My name is Merv Etat. I believe you are acquainted with my son, Yoh."

He gestured to the second volus, who bobbed a sketchy bow as Shepard looked at him in surprise.

"Yoh…yes, I remember you!"

"It's good to see you again, Commander," Yoh chirped, then sighed heavily. "The lovely Ms. Williams did not come, I see…more's the pity."


	47. Chapter 47

A/N: Very mild shmexy but I gosta warn you. Also, sorry for the lameness of the chapter...Del hates talking to me when she's over-emotional. Dagnabbit.

* * *

><p>Though the actual ceremony wouldn't be until the following day, the volus wanted to allow Shepard time to visit the crash site. They took a crawler, travelling along the ridge of the rocky valley, an Alliance private driving while the Admiral, Shepard, Liara, and the two volus rode in the back.<p>

"Your son was extremely brave, Merv," Shepard was telling the older of the pair as they rode, Hackett listening in curiously. "He took down eight geth on his own during the battle, and held the flank position for us so we could get into the tower."

"Yoh always was a bit…strange," Merv admitted, though affection was clear in his voice. "His interest in females of other species has constantly puzzled me as well. Can't get him to date a nice volus girl for the life of me. However I have always been very proud of him, and I am grateful to you for the respect you showed him at the Citadel."

"Spirit, courage…these aren't limited by species," Shepard replied. "Your son has both."

"Thank you, Commander," Yoh seemed pleased.

"I'm sorry Ash couldn't be here, Yoh. I know she would have liked to see you again."

"Really?" Though they couldn't see his face through his enviro-suit, the volus's entire being seemed to brighten up, before he looked at Merv. "Father, I hope you get to see her some day. Like a warrior angel, tall and graceful, and her gluteal-"

Shepard fought both a smile and a groan as Yoh went on about Ashley, her mind flashing back to the conversation she'd had earlier with Mordin about human females and their 'secondary sex characteristics'.

Hackett leaned over. "The volus really took down eight geth?"

"Absolutely," Shepard replied. "Two before we even got there, and then he covered us while we got out of the crashed MAKO and took out six more. Seriously, the man deserves a fucking medal."

"I don't know if volus give out medals, but…I agree," Hackett replied, impressed.

"Sir, we are approaching the crash site," the private up front suddenly announced. Hackett straightened, then nodded.

"Halt us just outside the perimeter," he ordered, then looked at Shepard as the vehicle slowed to a standstill. "The rest of us will stay around the crawler. This is for you, Commander."

Shepard nodded, then looked over at Liara as her hand was taken.

"Do you want me to come with you?" the asari asked softly. Shepard managed a smile, then bobbed her head.

"Yeah, thank you."

The crawler door opened, the sharp wind biting them in the cheeks again as they emerged. Frozen dirt crisp under her boots, Shepard drew the pea coat tighter around her, turning the collar up to help protect her face.

She first looked upward at the clear sky, tucking her gloved hands into her pockets before she looked at Liara and the others. Taking a deep breath, she walked around to the front of the crawler and finally peered out over the ragged valley.

Formed most likely by an earthquake, given the torn shape of the cliffs on two sides of it, the valley was rather small. It looked at first like old ruins had been left scattered throughout it until her eyes picked out the familiar shape of a fuselage, the sweep of a bulkhead.

Wordlessly, hands jammed deep in her pockets, Shepard started that direction, hearing Liara's footsteps crunching behind her.

The wreck had spread over a half-mile. There were hundreds of scattered bits of metal debris all over the place…some as big as a vehicle hubcap but most no larger than the palm of her hand, and unidentifiable. Two sections of the main hull seemed relatively intact and seemed half-sunken into the landscape, the ice and storms of two years relentlessly claiming it.

As she reached the center of the debris field, Shepard halted, closing her eyes. The wind, funneled by the wreck and the jagged cliff-edges seemed to moan and whisper, stirring her hair and caressing icy fingers over her face.

"Del?" Liara's whisper jarred her and she blinked, staring at the woman at her side a moment before she lowered her head. Concerned, the asari lightly placed her hand on Shepard's shoulder, the commander reaching up and laying her own over it a moment, before she started to walk again.

Reaching the larger of the two main pieces of debris, Shepard peered within the ragged edge, before stepping carefully up on the ice-slicked floor. It was the bulk of the CIC, still missing most of its roof. The twisted metal railing of the galaxy map promontory leaned at a sharp angle. Shepard's gloved hand gripped it as she braced herself to stand steady, looking upward through the rent in the top of the section.

_The CIC was all but gone, only the floor and ragged lengths of wall keeping the Normandy's body attached to its head. Debris floated idly about, caught along with the vessel's inertia and so seeming to just hang like insane party favors overhead. _

_Above she could see only space, eternal, depthless, black as death and as beautiful as diamonds sunk on velvet. The edge of a large planet, gold and rose, was slowly moving into view. _

The_ Normandy _is caught in her gravity well. It'll pull the wreckage right in.

_Hands drifted down, fingers sweeping lightly over Shepard's faceplate, like weeds in a still pond. Gently brushing them aside, Shepard looked up into the half-burned but still recognizable face of Ensign Parks. Parks had been assigned to them just after the Citadel attack…she had just been twenty. _

_Shepard's dark brown eyes shifted a little, the face of the serenely drifting Ensign reflecting on her face-plate in a background of glowing stars, before the commander turned away. _

Lifting a hand, Shepard idly rubbed at the tiny patch just below her hair-line, even though she knew better. It wasn't a flashback, simply a memory. Travelling down the sloping floor, she saw Liara looking sadly at the torn consoles, her own gloved fingers drifting across cold metal.

As they moved from her neck to her numbing cheek, Shepard could feel her fingers trembling. _It's the cold_, she told herself, even though she knew better. The cold was not sinking this feeling into her gut. The cold was not stealing her breath away.

Hunching in her coat she worked her way down the CIC again, and back outside. Crossing the distance to the smaller section, the remnants of the helm, her eye caught something trapped in the frigid earth. Crouching, she brushed the thin snow away from it, then took hold and wrenched it out of its bed.

Twists of scorched and half-melted wire joined the blackened length of wood, tied to its sides by flat metal pieces. Holding the ruined guitar neck in her hands, Shepard stared at it until she heard Liara's footsteps approaching. Gritting her teeth, she cast the debris aside and continued on her way toward the shattered helm.

* * *

><p>Watching her go, Liara's eyes drifted to the bit of wood she had thrown aside, her blue eyes glossing as she realized it was all that was left of Shepard's guitar. She remembered the first time she had heard Shepard play it. That was the day they had danced, and had almost shared their first kiss…before Joker's rather irritating interruption.<p>

Liara would always remember the song, and the look of serenity that had passed over the human's features as she had played it. She had seen the true Del completely then, for the first time, apart from the mind melds. It was a Shepard who had not known the pain and hardship of her childhood, a Shepard not worn down by time, not haunted by death. Though Liara had very quickly had a strong attraction to the woman, an affection and an attachment, she still believed that _this_ was the actual moment when she really fell in love…listening to that song, and watching her play.

Forcing her eyes away from the sad remnant on the snow, Liara followed after Shepard, who had disappeared within the helm. This was in even worse shape than the CIC, sheered away and so damaged by explosions that it was little more than a wall curving into the slope of the roof, and a patch of blackened equipment.

Liara's fingers drifted over the scorched, cold metal and she shuddered. The explosion here had been what had driven Shepard out into space. This was the closest either of them could ever really come to the exact spot where Shepard had died.

Her eyes fell on the human woman. She had seated herself in the shelter of the ruined consoles, knees drawn up under her pea coat. Her hands were resting on those knees, her synthetic eyes staring at the torn hole in front of her. Moving over, Liara seated herself beside her, wrapping her arms around Shepard as she lay her head against her shoulder.

Firmly, almost possessively, Shepard's hand gripped Liara's shoulder as well, and her cold cheek pressed against the asari's. Liara said nothing about the dampness…unsure if they were her tears, or Del's.

They sat there a long time, the sloping wall and their proximity protecting them from the cold. The tears, whomever they belonged to, had dried when Shepard finally spoke. "I remember it."

"The attack," Liara murmured, sitting back just enough to look into Shepard's eyes. Part of her cursed their mechanics, longing to see the woman's natural dark brown gaze looking back at her. The prosthetics made her eyes too distant, impossible to read.

"My death," Shepard admitted quietly. "I remember realizing I had no oxygen…reaching for the feeds, hoping to cut off the leak…but it was too late, they were too badly damaged."

Liara could feel her chest and throat clenching, but dared say nothing…not even to beg Shepard to be quiet. She had no desire to hear Shepard describe her final moments but she also knew it was something Del had to say, something she had to get through. Healing was always painful.

Shepard's black eyebrows knit, a strange expression crossing her face before she looked at Liara. "Just before I passed out, I-"

She broke off abruptly, brows knitting more tightly, eyes sliding away and shifting over the ruin as if to find some great truth imprinted there. Liara inclined her head in concern.

"What?" she asked gently.

"Nothing, it's…silly. I was suffocating. A brain not getting oxygen just…it does some weird shit."

"_Tell_ me," Liara urged gently. Shepard looked at her hesitantly, then sighed, the breath causing a pale bloom of white to drift into the air…affirmation to them both, perhaps, that she was alive.

"I heard _you_," she said at last. Liara lifted her brows, blinked.

"M-me?"

"I heard your voice," Shepard told her. "I can't recall the exact words but…it was similar to what you would say to me, you know…during the first knowledge melds we shared. About…how everything is connected, and finding peace."

Wiping a glove over her face, cheeks still reddened by the cold, she shook her head. "This place brought it all back…being here, seeing the helm. Before, I couldn't remember anything after shoving Joker into the lifeboat."

Liara shifted, her face contemplative as she moved hip to hip with the commander, mimicking her position. Her hand stole up and found Shepard's, their fingers entwining.

"Del," she said slowly. "There…is a story, told among my people. My mother used to mention it, and I heard it from the Priestesses at the Temple..."

"What story?" Shepard asked, turning her head to look at her.

"The Goddess Athame is the embodiment of many things," she stated. "She has achieved true Perfection, has become pure, joined with all the universe. She is the stars, and the stars are her, and it is her energy that binds everything as one. She is Strength, and she is Compassion, and she is Rage and Hate and Vengeance as well…but above all of these things, she is Love."

Shepard looked at her, her expression slightly puzzled as Liara met her eyes. "It is said that at the moment of one's death, there is a brilliant light that transitions us from our physical form into the universe, brings us back to the Goddess's embrace until we are a part of her and eternity, forever. It is said that sometimes, the Goddess Herself will speak to a spirit that is just about to cross over, welcoming the very select of Her children home again."

Shepard searched her face, then smiled slightly, one corner of her mouth rising. "You think that I heard the Goddess?" she asked. "It wasn't a strange voice I heard, Liara. It was _yours_."

"The Goddess is Love," Liara emphasized. "Her voice is unique to whomever She speaks to, and takes on the embodiment of…"

Here, Liara blushed a little, her already cold-flushed cheeks darkening a bit more. "Well. The embodiment of whatever means Love to the person she speaks to. A sister, or a mother…or…"

She shook her head a little. "Anyway. I do not know," Liara admitted. "Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps it was nothing more than the lack of air, an auditory hallucination-"

Shepard gripped her hand harder, leaning over until her forehead rested against Liara's temple. "It doesn't matter," she murmured. "What matters is that, in _whatever_ form…_you_ were there with me at the end. You already _know _you're a Goddess in my eyes…"

Liara felt tears rush to her eyes and made no motion to brush them away, merely clung to the woman that meant more to her than life…and let the pain go.

* * *

><p>Shepard and Liara were walking hand in hand as they left the wreckage, heading back to the patiently waiting group by the crawler. The ride back to camp was a silent one, even the affable Yoh respecting the weight of emotion in the air.<p>

Near where the shuttle had initially landed was a small complex of prefab domes and structures that would house them until the following morning, when the actual ceremony would occur. Amidst the soft mounds of the domes more shuttles had landed. One, Shepard was surprised to note, was marked with the Cerberus emblem. The others were clearly Alliance.

"I'm sorry, Shepard, I should have told you," Hackett admitted as they climbed out of the crawler and approached the camp. "You…were not the only one that was invited to the ceremony."

Shepard frowned in confusion as they neared, catching sight of a cluster of people gathered around, before her eyes started to widen. Liara's faint gasp was impossible to miss.

Garrus, Tali, Joker, and Chakwas had clearly ferried down in the Cerberus shuttle, each bundled against the cold, Joker with a sheepish grin on his face. A krogan stood with his back to them, turning his head to reveal Wrex's scarred face.

_He came all the way from Tuchanka?_ Shepard marveled.

The others…they were the _Normandy_ crew, everyone who had served under her on the ship, everyone who had escaped with their lives. She saw familiar face after familiar face, slightly changed due to the passing years but still recognizable. More than one hand snapped up to a salute at her and Hackett's approach, and Shepard could feel her throat tightening.

Then a pair of forms parted the crowd. In the lead was Anderson, a small set of Council guardsmen lingering just a few feet away. Behind him came the biggest surprise of all.

Ashley regarded Shepard stoically as the group drew nearer, halting just at Anderson's shoulder. She stood stiff and straight, hands clasped behind her back…ever the marine. Anderson smiled, striding to meet Shepard and engulfing her in a tight hug, which she happily returned.

"I can't believe you're here," she said as he loosened his grip.

"Of _course_ I'm here," he replied. "She was my ship too…once upon a time. Hackett and I pulled a lot of strings to get the surviving crew here."

"It wouldn't be right without them," Shepard agreed. Her eyes shifted to Ashley, who looked back blank-faced, unreadable.

Touching Anderson lightly on the shoulder as she stepped past him, she walked up to her former gunnery chief, regarding her evenly.

"I'm glad you came, Ash," she said.

"I owed it to the _Normandy_ and the crew," Williams replied, then looked at Anderson. "If you'll excuse me, sir, I need to make sure the supplies for tonight are offloaded."

At his faint nod, she turned on her heel and strode away. Shepard felt that anger grip her again and lowered her head with a frustrated sigh.

"She fucking hates me," she muttered.

"She doesn't hate you," Anderson told her, lifting a hand to her shoulder. "She's simply trying to _convince_ herself she does. I've told her time and again that you're not a traitor but you know Williams. Stubborn as a mule…a lot like her old CO."

* * *

><p>Night had fallen and with it, the cold had only grown worse. The largest prefab structure was a solar tent that had been erected, acting as something of a 'community square' where everyone gathered to talk and eat and get away from the unforgiving freeze. Shepard, a beer cradled between her knees, sat among several of her old crewmates, talking and occasionally even laughing as they all reminisced.<p>

To the other side of the tent, as physically as far from the Commander as she could get, Ashley was seated with the remains of her meal, talking with Yoh who had been her unceasing shadow since the moment they'd returned from the wreck.

_She seems to be enjoying herself_, Liara thought as she watched her friend, smiling at the volus and talking with animation. Glancing between Shepard and Williams, she shook her head, then steeled herself. Crossing the tent, giving a polite smile and nod toward Anderson as she passed, she walked up to Ashley's side.

The human woman glanced up at her, lifting a brow before nodding. "Liara."

"Ashley," Liara replied, then looked at the volus. "I am sorry to break this up my friend, but…would you mind allowing me and the lovely Ms. Williams to speak alone for a moment."

The volus sighed in lamentation. "I shall endure the parting somehow. My dear…I shall grieve every moment we are apart."

He bowed toward Ashley, who gave him a smirk, before he turned and trundled off.

"You know, he's not half bad," Williams commented after he'd gone, gesturing at a vacant seat. "He's pretty charming in his own way."

"He is a unique character," Liara agreed, taking the indicated seat. "If you are falling for him, Ash, I can suggest some volus courtship rituals. They fortunately have simple tastes, it seems, though an alarming number of their traditions include baked goods."

"Baked goods? Are you telling me volus are into cookies and cake?" Ashley laughed.

Liara smiled. "Well, they do not call them such of course…but you would be surprised at their wide array of confectionary…each with its own special occasion linked to it. For example, the volus dish _rifdel_ is used to celebrate attaining one's mathematical degree-"

Ashley waved a hand with a smirk, cutting her off. "I see you haven't changed Li," she pointed out. "And I know you didn't come over here to talk about rifdel and volus mating rituals. So…might as well get it over with."

"Get…what over with?" Liara asked.

"The lecture," Ashley replied. "You're over here to tell me what a huge mistake I'm making about Shepard. Believe me, I've heard it a thousand goddamn times from Anderson and…fucking _Garrus_ won't leave me alone about it. You know he's sent me twelve messages since Horizon?"

"Oh," Liara stated. "I did not know that. However you are mistaken. I did not come over here to…lecture you about Shepard, as you put it."

"Yeah, _right,_" Ashley snorted, sitting back in her chair. "Then why _are_ you here?"

Liara actually looked hurt a moment. "I came to speak with a friend I have not seen in two years."

Ashley stared at her, then her shoulders slumped. "Shit…Li, I'm sorry. I just…I didn't mean it. I…I'm just defensive, that's all. I keep getting beat over the head with everyone telling me how wrong I am about the Skipper and I guess I just thought-"

"It is all right, Ashley," Liara replied.

"No, it's not. I shouldn't have said that, I just…I just can't believe she'd _do_ something like this! And…and Garrus and Tali and…even Dr. Chakwas? How can they think this is _right_? And you…Li, I'm sorry but…how could _you_…I mean…after the pain she put you through, faking her death like that?"

"She did _not _fake her death," Liara said with more venom than she'd intended, her blue eyes narrowing.

"C'mon, Li…you _really_ believe that?" Ashley asked. "How can you-"

"I saw her body, Ashley," Liara said sternly. The former gunnery chief blinked, sitting back a little.

"You…what?"

"I _saw her body_," Liara told her. "I saved it from the Shadow Broker's men. I-"

She broke off, shaking her head, silent a moment. "I am sorry," she said at last. "I truly only did come over to see how you were doing. I am sorry, I will leave you alone-"

As she got to her feet, Ashley also rose. Perhaps it was the upset in the asari's eyes…or perhaps she recalled her own discussion with Shepard so long ago, about Liara and the timid archaeologist's discomfort with lying. Whatever the reason, Ashley reached out and caught her arm, looking weary but intent.

"Li, don't go…" she urged, then sighed and reluctantly added. "I…I think we need to talk…_really_ talk."

* * *

><p>Shepard's eyes narrowed across the way as she saw Liara get up from her seat, Ashley also rising and catching her arm. She could not hear what was being said, of course, but she could see the upset on the asari's face.<p>

She was just about to rise herself when Liara lowered her head and nodded, resuming her seat. Ashley looked less aggressive now, more like her old self as they resumed their conversation. Eyeing the pair warily, Shepard decided to remain where she was…though she did keep an eye on them as the conversation wore on.

As the hour grew late, the crowd slowly thinned as folks started to make their way to their individual domes to sleep. Shepard bid goodnight to Tali, Garrus, and Wrex before glancing toward Liara and Ashley again. Seeing they were still intently talking and the asari no longer looked upset, she headed toward her own prefab.

Kicking off her boots and stripping down to a tank and shorts, Shepard lay back on the wide cot and tucked her hands behind her head, staring upward. Tired as she was, her thoughts were too chaotic to allow her to sleep. She didn't know what she preferred…being oblivious of her last moments after the _Normandy_'s destruction…or remembering them in painful detail.

As good as it was to see all the old faces again it also left her feeling hollowed out, melancholy. She kept noting the faces that were absent; Pressley, Parks, and the others who had not survived. While most of the reunited crew seemed happy to see her, some looked at her like Ash did…with sorrow in their eyes, a sense of betrayal.

Only a few minutes after laying down the door slid open and Liara entered. Shifting her hands, Shepard half sat up, propping herself on her elbows as she looked at the asari.

"Li? You ok?" she asked. The asari said nothing, only kicked off her boots, peeling off her jacket before her shirt quickly followed. Shepard blinked as the woman swiftly stripped down to nothing, then seemed to surge onto the bed, grasping Shepard's face and all but engulfing her in an urgent kiss.

Falling flat with the asari spilling over her, Shepard more than eagerly responded, shocked to feel her eyes heating, to feel the same desperate urgency…the urgency to affirm that she was alive…that Liara was alive…and that they were together.

* * *

><p>Liara awoke just after dawn, bundled deep under the blankets. Shepard was still asleep if the cadence of her breathing was any indication. During the night the pair had shifted and now Shepard was nestled against Liara's back, her arms loosely but possessively wrapped around the asari, the soft tides of her breath brushing over Liara's bare shoulder.<p>

Moving softly so as not to wake her, Liara drew the human woman's arms more tightly about her, secure in her warmth. She colored a little as she remembered the night before. The urgency she had felt was unlike her…she was not one to be so forward and brazen, though of course Shepard had not seemed to mind.

She knew where it stemmed from, of course. She had told Ashley everything. Retrieving Shepard's body, Cerberus, their reunion…all of it. Speaking it all out loud, even to a friend, had only driven home once again how close she had come to losing the commander forever…and at the end she had desperately needed to affirm to herself that Shepard was alive. She needed to feel that bond, that oneness. She needed the reassurance.

Though everything had begun because Ashley had wanted to hear it, in the end it was more because Liara needed to say it. She did not know if the tale had changed her friend's mind any regarding Shepard but it had left her with hope, at least.

She heard the faint change in the pattern of her breathing a moment before Shepard stirred a little, slowly coming awake. When she felt the soft kiss on the crest of her shoulder, Liara murmured softly.

"Good morning."

"Morning," Shepard replied, pulling her a little closer and humming with contentment.

"The ceremony will be soon," Liara said after a long pause, ducking her head a little deeper into the piled blankets as if to avoid the reality of her own words. "We…should get up."

Shepard shifted, urging Liara to lay back and look at her, before dipping in and giving her a brief kiss. "You ok?" she asked.

"I have you," Liara replied with a smile, lifting one hand, the backs of her fingers drifting over Shepard's cheek. "How could I be anything but perfect?"

Shepard gave her that patented lopsided grin of hers, kissing the tip of her nose and then the side of her neck before they both reluctantly abandoned their warm cocoon to prepare for the day.

* * *

><p>It took all the shuttles to ferry the large group to the crash site after breakfast. The other crewmen of the original <em>Normandy<em>-unlike Shepard-had not yet seen it, and most stood in solemn silence, regarding the remnants of their once beloved ship.

The ceremony itself was simple, the volus unveiling a pedestal and plaque that had been airlifted to the site just at dawn. Shepard regarded its bronze patina and the names etched thereon, before she looked up to see all eyes were fixed to her.

She realized with an internal jolt that she was expected to say something.

_Fuck. I'm so horrible at speeches_, she thought as she straightened, thinking frantically.

Standing stiffly, hands clasped behind her back, she cleared her throat. "I don't need to tell a single one of you what we lost here," she started. "None of us will ever forget them, and the sacrifice they made. I will not drag this out…I am not very good with words, but I will say this. Nothing we do will ever honor them enough if we do not ourselves live with honor, and continue the fight they gave their blood too."

Looking toward her lost ship, she stood in silence for a long moment, before someone approached. Looking at the unfamiliar private, she weighed him silently. He drew the pistol from his belt, turning it in his hand and offering it to her butt first. She nodded once as she accepted the weapon, and primed it.

Lifting her arm she aimed the gun toward the strip of sky just above the cliffside, just above the _Normandy_. Nearly everyone present, from Hackett to Tali to even Yoh Etat –who had procured a short-barreled rifle that was still almost as tall as he was- similarly aimed their weapons.

"Ready!" she barked. "Steady! _Fire_!"

Gunshots shattered the air simultaneously. A perfect beat later, another volley was unleashed, then a third. Seven times, the guns roared before falling silent. Lowering the pistol, Shepard offered it back to the private butt-first, and as he took it, he met Shepard's eyes and gave her a crisp salute.

* * *

><p>"I will <em>not <em>miss the cold, that is for sure," Tali commented as she followed Garrus and Liara back onto the shuttle, ready to depart for the _Normandy_ again.

"Just tell her that next time she crashes a ship, it had best be on a tropical world," Garrus teased, taking his seat. Tali looked back through the open door to see Shepard bidding Anderson and Hackett her good-byes…before she noticed Ashley heading toward them.

She had not been witness to the brawl the two human women had gotten into on Horizon but like everyone on the new _Normandy_, she had heard about it. She felt her stomach sink, hoping that this would not devolve into the same as she warily watched the pair, unaware that Liara was doing the same.

* * *

><p>"Commander."<p>

Shepard turned her head, feeling her shoulders stiffen as Ashley walked over. "Ash," she greeted, her tone neutral.

Sensing the tension, Hackett and Anderson both excused themselves, leaving the two women facing each other alone. They remained in silence a moment, before Williams cleared her throat, then wordlessly offered her hand.

Searching the other woman's eyes a moment, Shepard reached out and accepted it, gripping it tightly a moment before Ash suddenly tugged her forward, wrapping her other arm momentarily around Shepard's shoulders in a hug. "You take care of yourself out there, Skipper," she said roughly. "Come home soon, ok?"

Shepard returned the hug, closing her eyes momentarily, feeling relief coming over her. "You too, Ash…" she whispered back. "You too."


	48. Chapter 48

A/N: Firstly, sorry for yesterday. Work was a clusterfuck. Today was much better.

Secondly, tonight I will be playing ME3 for the first time...and I have a full three day weekend devoted to nothing but it's awesomesauce goodness. Yes, this means I will not be posting a chapter on Monday, so...sorry bout that too. However in return you will get an extra chapter on Saturday the 17th to make up for it :)

Enjoy!

* * *

><p>"Shepard? May I try that?"<p>

Shepard glanced up from refilling her whiskey, lifting her brows at the redhead sitting opposite her. Earlier that morning she had returned on the shuttle from…rather reluctantly…returning Liara to Hagalaz. She had decided to take her back herself rather than rendezvous with Wilcher and the _Pale Horse, _if only to selfishly delay their parting for a few hours more.

Almost immediately upon re-docking, Kelly had intercepted her and suggested meeting for drinks…which with Kelly always meant she wanted to ply her psychologist trade. Shepard didn't mind so much. She genuinely liked Kelly and the yeoman wasn't patronizing or irritatingly superior like Alliance psychologists were. She didn't think there was a squirt of piss's chance in Hades Gamma the woman would actually 'fix' her, of course…that was probably well beyond the skills of _anyone_ in this sorry galaxy but…well, any meeting where booze was involved was generally aces in Del's book.

At Kelly's question she set the whiskey bottle aside and plucked out the freshly lit cigar in her mouth. "This? You want to try my cigar?"

"I have never smoked before," Kelly admitted. "I am curious."

"You'll never smoke _again_ after, if you try this," Shepard said with amusement, then held it out to her friend. "Go ahead."

Kelly plucked the offered stogie from Shepard's fingers and took a tentative drag. For a single heartbeat nothing happened, then her face turned purple and she began to cough frantically. Shepard laughed, rescuing the smoke before the yeoman could drop it.

"You ok?" she asked. Kelly nodded, still whooping with coughs. Grinning, Shepard tucked the smoke back between her own teeth and took a draw.

Getting her air back, backhanding tears from her eyes, Kelly took a drink of her whiskey, coughed once more, then shook her head. "You're right," she rasped. "I don't think I'm ever going to smoke again."

"Let me pour you a glass of pris para and you'll never fucking _drink_ again either," Shepard grinned with a twinkle in her eye. Kelly shook her head.

"Oh no," she said, waving her hand. "A friend of mine tried that at a bar on Thessia once. I thought they'd have to do CPR on him afterward. I have no problem trying new things but there's a line between curious and suicidal."

Shepard grinned, then kicked back in her chair, draping one leg over the arm of it. Taking a draw she leaned her head back and looped lazy smoke rings toward the ceiling vent, before she looked back at her yeoman. "So," she said. "Gonna ask me about being at the crash site? How I felt revisiting what was more or less the place where I died? Seeing the old crew?"

"I don't have to," Kelly pointed out, then smiled. "You just asked all the questions yourself."

"Then let me give you the answers too. Cold. Disturbing. Bittersweet."

"I heard you reconciled…at least somewhat…with Ashley Williams."

Shepard bobbed her head a little, picking up her glass. "I don't know what Liara said to her. I didn't ask and she didn't offer. I won't argue with the effect it had on Ash, though…"

She smirked wickedly, swirling the whiskey around in the glass. "…or on Liara."

Kelly smiled, sitting back. "I am glad that you went. Closure can be painful but it is necessary. You took a big step toward putting all of that behind you."

"Yeah, I'm wonderful," Shepard said wryly, topping off her glass again. Kelly inclined her head.

"You say that sarcastically. Considering all you have accomplished, you should be saying that as a statement of fact."

Shepard grunted noncommittally. Kelly watched her a moment, then said, "To be honest, what I wanted to discuss was not so much your visit to Alchera, but your eyes."

"My eyes?" Shepard sniffed, confused. "What _about_ them?"

"Commander, you were taken over by another intelligence and rendered blind. I know you well enough to know what you fear, and to be honest…it's not death."

Shepard scowled. "What is it you think I fear?"

"Helplessness," Kelly answered instantly. "Being commandeered, even by a friendly entity…losing your sight…it must have made you feel very helpless."

"My sight is nothing," Shepard replied. "For fuck's sake, less than two hours back on the ship and Miranda had me seeing again with that damn squealer of hers. Few weeks and I'll even have my own eyes back. It's just another injury, nothing to fucking cry over."

"Yes, but for a few hours, you were completely blind," Kelly pressed. "Even knowing it wasn't permanent, you had to rely completely upon others to guide you."

"I relied on Liara," Shepard sniffed. "I _trust_ Liara."

Kelly relented with a faint nod of her head, and a small smile. "It is good to have someone you trust so completely. I talked with Liara a while when she was aboard ship. She is so alluring, very sweet. I can see what draws you to her."

Shepard leaned over the table, ashing her cigar in the tray with a smirk. "Getting designs on my girlfriend, Chambers?"

"Not at all," Kelly replied. "Just appreciation, Shepard."

"Art appreciation," Shepard murmured as she sat back. "Kaidan said that about her once too, shortly after she came aboard the _Normandy_. I caught him staring at her one day and asked if he had designs on her. That's what he said to me in answer."

"Kaidan Alenko…he was the one that passed away on Virmire, wasn't he?"

Shepard hummed an affirmative, but the expression on her face was stone. Kelly didn't push, simply nodded.

"Well. I am glad you got to spend some time with her. You seem a lot happier when she is around."

"Little fucking ray of sunshine, that's me," Shepard smirked, stumping out the butt of her smoke.

"I mean it, Shepard. Everything about you seems to relax a little. It is a shame she cannot stay on board permanently. I know her work is important and you wish to keep her out of direct harm's way. I hope the mission concludes soon and you are able to spend the time together that you need."

"Yeah," Shepard murmured softly. "Me too."

Finishing the rest of her whiskey, Kelly glanced at the clock, then smiled. "It is getting late. I had best leave you to rest, Commander."

"Good night Kelly," Shepard told her with a nod. After the yeoman had gone, Shepard spent a few minutes regarding the dark amber depths of her whiskey. Already the _Normandy_ seemed so much emptier, hours stretching ahead of her like years.

"Good night, Liara," she murmured softly to the empty room, lifting her glass before she drained the rest of it. "Sweet dreams."

* * *

><p>Shepard sipped at her coffee the next morning, glancing over the reports on the data pad Miranda had handed to her and trying to ignore the vaguely pinching headache behind her eyes. She had foolishly finished the rest of the bottle of whiskey last night after Kelly had gone, and while it took a lot to actually make her hung over, her head was letting her know she had flirted a bit too close to the line.<p>

Sensing eyes upon her, she glanced up to see a form disappear behind the bulkhead, vanishing toward the port side observation lounge. She knit her brows, then turned her head to look toward Kasumi, who was seated at one of the far tables with Daniels as the two women enjoyed their breakfast.

Setting her coffee on the counter a moment, she signed off the reports then handed them back to her XO. "Miranda, has Thane come out of his room since Sydney was here?" she asked.

"I…don't recall seeing him," Miranda admitted. "But he rarely came out before then as well. Seems to prefer his own company. Did you still want to have that meeting this morning?"

Shepard nodded. "I want all the specialists up in the conference room in an hour," she said. "Make sure Gabby, Ken, and Joker are there as well, we'll need their input."

Taking up her coffee again, she headed the direction in which she had seen the shadow.

Thane was staying in the small life-support control room. There was rarely ever cause for someone to go in there and he had said he preferred the dry atmosphere. It was the only other room besides Kasumi's in that direction.

The door was shut but not locked. Not truly being crew quarters, there was no chime on the door, and the metal was thick enough that any knock would go unheard within. It was unlocked, so she took a chance, and stepped inside.

Thane was seated just past the softly humming air filtration system, looking outward through a port to the engine core. He didn't turn his head when she came in, but she was not so foolish to believe he didn't hear her.

"Good morning, Commander," he murmured as she neared. "I am sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you at your coffee."

"Forget the coffee," Shepard said lightly as she leaned on the corner of the filtration system and looked out the port as well. "Feel free to disturb me whenever Miranda's handed me a bunch of reports. Something on your mind, Thane?"

"A few things," he admitted. "I…your friend left the ship, because of me."

Shepard said nothing, her artificial eyes simply reflecting the light of the drive core. After a moment, the drell continued.

"My actions have caused a lot of pain in my life. Your friend's anger was justified. I never questioned what I was raised and trained to do. It was an honor to be chosen. If I were faced with taking that contract again I could not say whether my choices would be any different. However being faced with one's own mortality lends a unique perspective. I am…a terrible man, Commander."

"Terrible men don't concern themselves with questions of ethics or morality," Shepard told him.

"Even so. I have made choices that have hurt those around me, and not just the friends and families of those I was contracted to eliminate. My own family…"

Shepard finally straightened. Moving over, she sat down across from him, regarding him stoically. His face was strangely serene as he looked at her.

"I had a wife," he told her. "I had.._still_ have, a son. I have not seen him since my wife passed."

"Illness?" Shepard asked softly. "Accident?"

"Murder," he answered. "She was killed to punish me. After she was given to the sea I hunted her killers…much like your friend hunted me."

Shepard lifted a brow. "Sydney hunted you?"

"Yes. For over a year. She is…tenacious."

"You have _no_ idea," Shepard murmured. _So, __**that's **__where Sydney had vanished to after leaving service. All over __**Carl**__? _

"Pain and grief cause us to disconnect, to shut ourselves off from others, from our own bodies. Left to their own devices, they do what they will."

"Sydney didn't even _like_ Carl, the guy was a self-involved ass."

"I do not think her quest for vengeance was for him, but for herself," he told her. "That is a conversation you will have to have with her. I cannot speak as to her reasons, only my own."

"You mentioned a son? Where is he?"

"His name is Kolyat. After his mother died and I – _left,_ he was raised by his aunts and uncles. I have not seen him since he was quite small. Last evening a friend contacted me. It seems Kolyat found out the truth about me…what I am, what I do. He was…understandably angry, and has followed a path I did not wish for him."

"What'd he do?"

"He has apparently taken a contract on the Citadel. I…would like your permission to depart the _Normandy_ and go there, see if I can find him."

"Contract…you mean an _assassination_ contract."

"Yes. This is not a road he should be walking. No one knows better than I that only pain and regret await him. Not to mention he is not trained. He could get himself killed. I cannot make up for not being there for him when he was growing up but…I have to do _something._ He deserves better out of this life."

Shepard silently measured the man a moment, then nodded. "Then we'll go and find him."

The drell blinked. "I…would not ask this of you, Commander. This is my business, my doing. It is my mistake to correct-"

"And you are my crew," Shepard told him. "The more eyes on the ground the faster we'll find him, the more chance we'll have to stop him before he gets himself hurt. The _Normandy_ can be at the Citadel in twenty hours."

The drell, who had always been so calm and collected, even when Sydney was pointing a gun at his face, actually appeared startled. "I…do not know what to say," he murmured.

"You don't have to say anything," Shepard told him.

"Thank you," Thane murmured, his eyes casting down a moment before they looked up at her again. "May I…ask you a question? I understand if it is too personal…"

"Go on."

"I do not leave this room much but I do hear things," he told her. "I understand we visited the site where your original ship had crashed."

Shepard nodded faintly, searching his face. Fuck if the bastard wasn't the _hardest_ person to read. "That's not all you heard," she said after a moment. "You want to ask me about dying, don't you?"

He made a commiserating sound. "It _is_ my understanding that you perished in the same crash. At least some of the crew made it seem so."

"I did," she admitted.

"Religious beliefs vary from species to species and even across them," he said. "I do not know what it is humans believe…what _you_ believe. You…strike me as spiritual but not necessarily religious."

Shepard was surprised. "You think I'm spiritual?"

"You have that aura about you, that _feel_…I cannot describe it, it is more like an instinct. Forgive me if I'm off base."

"No, you're not…I mean, I'm not religious as you said but…I'm hardly one to claim there's not more out there. Things we don't understand. Fuck, I've seen _enough_ of this goddamn galaxy to know that _we_ know fuck-all."

He nodded faintly, then clasped his hands together in front of his knees. "Do you…remember it? What it was like to die?"

Shepard felt her shoulders tense a little. "I didn't at first…not until recently. Now…I remember far too much about it."

"Were you afraid?"

From anyone else, these questions would have irritated the piss out of her. However Thane…though they were barely acquaintances…was dying himself. Shepard could not blame him for wanting answers, reassurances, or even just the cold stark truth.

_A known enemy, however strong and frightening, is always easier to fight than an unknown one._

Perhaps it was the mere fact that she barely knew this man that actually made it easier to talk about. "No…I don't think I was afraid," she admitted after a moment's consideration. "I was really just kind of pissed."

"You were angry?"

"I'm usually angry," she smirked, "but yeah. Angry because I couldn't fight it, couldn't stop it. I thought it was such a silly way to die. No…no blazing guns, no desperate struggle just…me and space. At the very end I felt…better. Calm."

She didn't tell him about hearing Liara's voice. In a million goddamn years, Shepard would never admit _that _to _anyone_ but Liara.

"And…after?" Thane ventured. Shepard shrugged.

"I don't remember anything after. Not until I woke up on a bio-bed with alarms going off."

A weary shadow seemed to pass over his already dark eyes, his whole figure seeming to droop under some great weight. "So," he said softly. "There is nothing after death…"

Shepard's brows knit. "I didn't say that," she told him sternly.

"You said you-"

"I said I didn't _remember._ Doesn't mean there wasn't anything there. I don't remember being born, either, but I'm pretty sure that fucking happened."

He studied the floor a moment. "All my life I have believed that there is more beyond this life. I am not my body. I am separate. My consciousness is undying energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed. Looking into that final abyss, however…I suppose it is natural to doubt, to wonder…to fear."

"Of course it is," Shepard told him. "Look, I _can_ tell you this. Whatever is after death…whether it's some grand paradise, returning to a deity or being reborn or even just complete oblivion… _whatever _it is…it's…_all right_, somehow."

_God, that sounded fucking lame_, Shepard thought as she wiped her palms on her knees, then got to her feet. "I'll tell Joker to head us to the Citadel. We'll find your son, ok?"

"Thank you, Commander. I…thank you."

Shepard nodded. "We're having a meeting at 0800 up in the conference room. I would like you to be there."

She waited for his answering nod before she turned and strode out.

* * *

><p>A holographic image of the Normandy hovered silently above the center of the conference table as the room slowly filled. When Jack finally came in, she immediately rocked back in her hair, planting a boot on the edge of the table. Miranda gave her a disapproving look, and Jack rubbed the side of her nose with her middle finger and gave the woman a look that all but simmered over with challenge.<p>

Shepard was the last to enter, following in on Joker's heels as the pilot limped over to his spot. The commander didn't sit, but simply stood at the head of the table, regarding the gathered group.

Drell, human, turian, asari, quarian, krogan, salarian…Cerberus and not, male and female, old and young, all eyes were turned silently to her.

"Good morning," she greeted. "I received a report this morning that yet another colony has gone missing. Ferris Fields."

The silence was palpable for a moment, before she continued.

"The Collectors aren't resting and neither are we. We have finished our last recruitment for this endeavor. You are each the best of your field, the most dedicated and talented team of specialists in this galaxy. I am honored to serve with each and every one of you. However, all the skills and experience in this room is not enough to stop our enemy. We also need the best gear, the most cutting-edge technology available. Joker."

"The _Normandy_ SR2 was specced to the original," the helmsman spoke up. "However the Collector's magnetohydrodynamic weaponry cut through both barriers and shielding last time as if they weren't there. The SR2's defenses are only slightly above that…if we are confronted with the Collector ship again they are going to do to _**this**_ _Normandy_ what they did to the last…and just as easily. We need better armor, better shielding, and we need better weaponry if we're even going to stand a chance."

"Dr. T'Soni has been able to obtain top of the line weapons and armor schematics from dozens of different sources," Shepard continued. "Some ship-based and some for foot-soldiers and personnel. The purpose of this meeting is to go over these schematics and choose the best ones for our purposes. I want everyone's input and suggestions on ways we can ensure that when the time _does_ come for us to take this fight to their doorstep, we have the best chance of walking away. Sydney Rasler and her group Thanatos are standing by ready and willing to put all the upgrades into place. Any questions?"

Silence reigned, and she nodded. Touching the console on the table before her, the holograph of the _Normandy_ vanished, replaced by a different image. "First on the board is the most promising weapons schematic we were able to find. It is turian technology based on the very magnetohydrodynamic weaponry that Sovereign utilized…"

* * *

><p>It was well into the afternoon before the meeting finally adjourned, a dozen different ship and armament upgrades having been discarded, and a dozen more already on their way to Hagalaz and the Folly so the proper tools and resources could be amassed to implement them. As the room cleared, Shepard lingered behind, filing through the selected upgrades one more time. It was a moment before she realized someone else hadn't departed, either.<p>

"Something on your mind, Garrus?" she asked. The turian had been terse the whole meeting, speaking only in short sentences, a look on his face like he wanted to kick a varren.

"You said we were en route to the Citadel," he stated, his grey-blue eyes even. She glanced up at him, noticing off hand that his scars from Omega were less red than they had been.

"That's right. We're about due to resupply and there's some business I need to attend to. Why do you ask?"

"Do you remember when I first came aboard, and I told you about Sidonis?"

"One of your men, right? The one that betrayed you?"

"That's him. I've gotten a tip about him. Seems he met someone named Fade on the Citadel. This ass apparently helps people 'disappear'. I'd like permission to look for him once we dock, if that's all right…see what I can't dig up."

Shepard nodded, then folded her arms, her look turning to concern. "What is it you plan to do with Sidonis if you find him?"

"I plan to do to him what he did to the rest of my team…put him in a grave," Garrus replied. "He deserves no less for what he did."

Shepard pursed her lips a little. She considered Garrus a friend, a _good_ friend even. What she was seeing on his face right now disturbed her.

"No," she said at last. He blinked, his expression first stunned, then hardening.

"You won't let me off-ship to go find him?"

"No, I won't let you go off-ship to go find him _alone_," Shepard told him sternly. "If you're going to do this, Garrus, then you're _not_ going by yourself. Thane has some business I'm helping him with dockside as well. Come with us and when that's finished we'll find your Fade and see if we can't get the information you need, all right?"

"Shepard-"

"This is the _only way_ I'm going to let you do this, Garrus," Shepard said sternly. "Either I go with you or you don't go at _all_, is that clear?"

He blinked, then straightened, nodding. "Yes, ma'am. Understood."

"All right. Be geared up and ready when we get to dockside then."

As he stepped out, she blew out a breath, lowering her head a little. Vengeance was such a murderous little demon to carry around with you…a demon which seemed to have infected several people aboard this ship. Zaeed was consumed with his vengeance against Vido. Jack wanted her vengeance against Cerberus. Now Garrus was in danger of putting aside his level-headed rationality in a blind quest for revenge as well.

Even Shepard was not immune. She could not pretend that part of what drove her against the Collectors wasn't the desire to inflict sheer, unadulterated retribution upon them for what they'd done…to Nan, if no one else.

"God stay the hand that wields the blade," she murmured to herself. "And cool the fires within our eyes, ere selfsame throats are slit upon the edge that would seek another's blood."

* * *

><p>The kid was seventeen or eighteen, gangly and lank. His hair was little more than ill-trimmed scruff, the same color as the ill-trimmed scruff that roughed up his cheeks and chin. Skinny enough that the shoulders of his tunic looked hung from a hanger, his rapidly darting brown eyes seemed to take up his entire face.<p>

"Yeah, I can get it, no problem," the kid said eagerly to into his third-hand headset, pale lips skinning back over yellowed teeth as he punched in the order on the public terminal. "Yeah, an hour…no sweat at all. You got it, my man."

Closing out the communication, still grinning, the boy turned around, only to let out a startled holler and nearly crash back into the wall. Steady black eyes looked into his, and it took a moment for his frantic mind to put a name to the familiar features.

"Kr-_Krios_?"

"Calm down, Mouse," the drell said softly. The boy stared a moment, before his eyes shifted to the silent woman standing beside him. He licked his lips nervously, holding his hands up, instinctively seeking an avenue of escape. When he saw a turian at the end of the hall, blocking the only route, he started to sniffle. In seconds he had broken down crying completely.

"Please…_please_ don't hurt me," he begged, seeming to speak more to the woman than to the drell. She looked surprised, lifting her brows, but he only blubbered harder.

"It w-was _legal_," he sobbed. "I _swear _it was legal, everyone th-thought you were dead…p-please don't kill me-"

"The fuck is your problem, kid?" Shepard asked, completely astonished. Thane stepped forward again, taking the boy's arm, though not ungently.

"Calm down, Mouse. No one is going to kill you."

"_She_ will," he sniffled, wiping a dirty sleeve under his nose. "I-I heard stories about her…"

"Oh _really_?" Shepard scowled, folding her arms. The boy only sobbed harder, pressing back against the wall, hands hovering up over his face.

"No! Don't let her kill me!"

Shepard tossed her hands in the air before taking a step back. "Get a handle on him, Thane, before he pisses himself," she muttered in irritation.

_Is this what people really think of me? What __**kids **__think of me? _

"Shepard isn't going to hurt you, Mouse," Thane reassured. "Why do you think that she would? What was 'legal?'"

"T-The VI," he sniffed again, watering eyes fixing on Thane's face. "S-She was _dead_, everyone thought she was dead…it's legal to make a VI personality off a living person if they're dead-"

"This is about a _VI_?" Shepard blurted. "You think I'd _shoot you_ over a goddamn V-"

She broke off with a catch in her breath, shaking her head before her temper could get the best of her. The kid thought she was monster enough to actually _shoot_ him for making her a VI personality?

"We're not here about the VI, Mouse," Thane said gently. "We need your help. An assassin was hired for a hit recently. We need to know who hired him and who the target is."

Watery eyes still warily fixed to Shepard, Mouse seemed to regain some of his dignity. He swiped his grimy hand under his nose again, then shook his head. "I…I know but…I can't tell you. If I squeal it'll be my ass in the fire before an hour's gone by."

"No one will know we talked to you," Thane told him. "I promise it won't be traced back to you."

"I…" the boy hesitated again, big eyes shifting around again, before he gave a timid nod. "I-I don't know the target," he said swiftly. "I just know who put the hit out. It-…Elias K-Kelham. It was him."

"Thank you," Thane smiled. "You did good. We'll keep this quiet, I promise."

Mouse only bobbed his head, trembling a little as Thane stepped back. Nodding to Shepard, the drell turned to go. Her brooding gaze landing on the boy, Shepard started to follow, then paused.

"Mouse…"

"Wh-what?" he asked, instantly tensing up again, terror once more crossing his face. Shepard felt her chest clench.

_A fucking __**monster**__._

"Do you happen to have one of those VIs?"

He licked his lips, blinking a few times, before his hand stole into his pocket. He withdrew an OSD, holding it as if it were a dead rat and stretching it out. Taking a step forward, Shepard held out her palm and he let it drop into her grasp.

"Thanks kid," she said gently. "And thanks for your help."

"Y-yeah," he whispered. Turning away from him, she slid the OSD away into a pouch on her belt, her face changing to stone as she rejoined Thane and Garrus.

"You ok?" Garrus asked as they walked back toward C-Sec.

"Kid thought I was going to shoot him over a stupid little _VI_," she grit. "Is that how they see me? How _kids_ see me? Some psycho maniac that just blows people away over the most incidental bullshit?"

"Mouse was always flighty," Thane said softly. "Comes from growing up in ducts and vents, never knowing where your next meal is coming from. Stories about you are greatly exaggerated, Shepard. That al-Jilani woman…well, it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't _matter_?" Shepard glared. "I don't shoot unarmed civilians, Thane. He about _pissed_ himself because of me!"

"Because of a _lie_ of you," Thane reminded her. "You cannot take responsibility for the evil others do."

"The fuck ever," Shepard mumbled. "Let's just find this Kelham asshole."

She didn't tell Thane that she knew that fear all too well…that life growing up in vents and ducts, starving, paranoid. Perhaps that was what bothered her the most. She and Mouse were not all that different. What fates had intervened to make her a military hero and him just another two-bit lackey living on the streets? What had _she_ done to deserve the fortune of what she had, while he still scrabbled for everything?

_You had someone like Nan, someone who took the time to show you there was another path. If not for her…__**that**__ would be __**you**__. Skinny, paranoid…a two bit street thug licking the boots of assholes like Sperry and Fist for any scrap tossed your way. You were spared that because of Nan…_

Nan, who was still out there somewhere…lost, hurt, perhaps even dead, trapped in the alien grip of the Collectors.

As they reached the C-Sec office Bailey looked up at them from his console, then rose and came over with a nod. He had seemed rather eager to help them…much like he had been rather eager to help her reinstate her IDs the first time she'd come back through. The suspicious part of herself still couldn't help but wonder just what his motivation was…_why_ he was so helpful.

"Did you get a name?" he asked as he reached them.

"Elias Kelham," Shepard replied, and watched the man's face pale. "Someone you know, I take it."

"Shit," Bailey murmured, scrubbing his fingers through his bristles before he gestured at an office door. "Yeah…I think we need to _talk._"


	49. Chapter 49

A/N: Ok, so here's the skinny.

Sorry for the long hiatus. Finished ME3 this weekend. Tuesday's chapter writing time was taken up with me writing a very frantic and very cathartic 'fix' of the end of ME3. 8000 words and some explosions later I have it out of my system…the very first scene I have pre-written, and hopefully it will change before we reach that part of DE3. That said, I need to answer a question I've gotten more than once.

Yes, I am going to continue on the DE series regardless of the end of ME3. If you haven't reached the end of the game, I won't include spoilers but I will say this. Play it. All the way up until the end the game is magnificent. When I make it to that point in DE I will put my newly penned ending climax in and continue from there…hopefully, however, it will be completely different than what I have now, because Bioware will have made this mistake right again.

Next bit of news: Another hiatus is upcoming. I will be posting today (obviously), tomorrow, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week. On Thursday I will be away from work, preparing for a surgery I am having on Friday. I will be down for two weeks. For the first several days I can guarantee there won't be any DE updates. The rest of the time will be spotty, depending on how long I can sit and how many distractions I have to endure. I will be popping on and off again on Del's facebook profile so you can probably catch me there from time to time, but worst case scenario is that the 21st will be the last chapter posted until the 9th of April.

For now…enjoy

* * *

><p>Shepard did her best to ignore the crawling itch that went over her skin as she stepped into the quiet holding room with Bailey. It was fucking stupid, that itch. She wasn't under arrest, this wasn't Earth. Still, the very smell in the room was far too familiar for her tastes, and she disliked cops with intensity.<p>

_Be fair. Garrus was a cop. Bailey's been helping you. _

Putting her discomfort aside, she folded her arms and fixed the man with a look. "So, tell me about Kelham," she ordered.

"He was small time before the attack on the Citadel. Filled a vacuum left behind when a lot of the real criminal minds got wiped out. Now he thinks his shit don't stink." He waved a hand, sighing. "The problem is we…have an _understanding_."

Shepard's eyes narrowed immediately. "You mean he _bribes_ you."

"It's awkward, all right?" Bailey huffed. "He tries not to cause too much trouble and makes an occasional 'donation', I try not to piss him off too bad. It keeps the peace, and sometimes around here, just finding a tolerable balance is all you can really do."

"Well this 'tolerable balance' is going to have to change," Shepard said sternly. "I need to know who that mark is. I don't give a fuck about Kelham but I do care about keeping a kid from making a very serious mistake."

"I'm still with you on that, Commander," Bailey said. "I'll make it work. I can have them bring Kelham in and you can question him. With luck he won't know I'm even involved. You better believe if it helps this kid and his father out, I'll do it."

"Why?" Shepard asked. Bailey's blue eyes grew hard and somehow…ashamed.

"You think he's the only man ever screwed up raising a boy?" he asked grimly. Shepard searched his eyes, then nodded once.

"Fine. Bring him in. I'll get it out of him."

"Yeah…just don't mess him up too badly. I gotta put the pieces back together when you're through."

Stepping back out of the office on his heels, Shepard headed over to where Thane and Garrus were waiting. "He's bringing Kelham in. He and I are going to have a little…_chat_, but he's not to know that Bailey had anything to do with it."

"Understood," Thane replied, as Garrus fluttered one mandible slightly in a smirk.

"You're going to _chat_ with him, Shepard? Should I call the medics to carry him out again now or wait until after he's bled a bit?"

She gave him a withering look, before parking herself near one of the doors, looking off at nothing in particular.

"Shepard seems…moody. Is this normal for her?" Thane ventured, glancing at the turian.

"This is downright _serene_ for her," he said dryly, then shook his head. "No, honestly…I think all of this is just weighing on her shoulders, and without Liara to provide a balance…"

"They are close?" The drell asked. Garrus glanced at him, then blew out a breath.

"I keep forgetting, you haven't mingled much with the crew yet since you've come on board. Yeah…close doesn't begin to describe it. Shepard's strong, got a temper like a rabid rynoch when she gets going, and really doesn't like problems she can't make go away with a bullet or jab to the eye. She's gone through fire that would…well, I can't imagine how she's done it, to be honest. Liara keeps her together, gives her peace. It's…an amazing thing to watch, actually. When I see the two of them together I just…well. I can only hope that someday I can have something like that in my life."

Thane's eyes grew far away, and he nodded. "Something like that," he echoed in understanding. "Someone who can just smile and change who you are…make all the darkness go away."

"Yes, exactly," Garrus murmured, glancing at the drell. After a moment of silence, studying the other man, he said, "You had someone like that?"

"My wife," he said softly. "She has gone to the depths."

"I'm sorry," Garrus replied genuinely.

"I have failed my family so much," Thane told him. "I am glad that I am getting at least a brief chance to put some of it right again."

YYY

Shepard's hands planted over Kelham's and she leaned in almost intimately close. He smelled like powder and cologne…expensive shit. It burned her sinuses.

"Let me ask again," she said in a low, dangerous voice. "Who is the assassin's target?"

Kelham was a fairly plain man…one that had polished himself up with blood-money and the airs of the self-important. His suit probably cost more than her N7 training and he had that smug, bullying look on his face that Shepard loathed.

_Thinks his shit don't stink indeed. _

"I want to speak to my advocate," he replied with a icy little grin, self-confidence oozing out of every pore. When her eyes narrowed he lifted a brow. "Let me explain how this works_, little girl_. If you don't unstrap me from this chair right now, I'll have your job inside an hour. You will never work on the Citadel or any human colony world again. More, I have _friends_…friends who are very fond of me. I can't say _what _they would do if they thought a little girl like _you_ was harassing me."

"Hmm," Shepard's gaze shifted over his. Behind her, she could feel the weight of Thane and Garrus's eyes on her, though both men were standing silently by the door, making no moves to interrupt. "I think that was a _threat_, Mr. Kelham."

"I don't make threats," he said with a charming grin.

"I swear to _fuck _if you say 'I make promises' I'm going to erase four of your teeth," she snarled. "Now let me explain to _you_ how this works. If you don't tell me the mark right now, what I'm going to leave of you is not even going to look human any more, you wáng bā dàn. Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài."

"What's that, quarian?" he asked smugly, lifting his brows a little. "Is it some pretty little insult you learned from a quarian whore-"

She thought she heard Garrus groan behind her a breath before her forehead slammed into Kelham's nose. In such a position, such a blow could not be anticipated…not by a stupid fuck like Kelham, anyway. There was no shift of weight or swing of an arm to anticipate or adjust for the strike. His nose broke and he shrieked in pain and surprise, blood flooding down over his lips. Shepard straightened, her face stone and murder.

"It's _Chinese_, actually," she said with a deceptively chilling calm. "For an educated man, Kelham, you are a _stupid_ fucking tun, aren't you?"

"You _bitch_!" he squealed, spitting blood from his lips. "You're going to pay for that! I'll see you in prison! I'll see you bent over a hot furnace and ass-fu-"

He broke off as Shepard did hit him this time, her fist looping out and loosening more than one tooth. His eyes unfocused a moment before she gripped his chin and yanked his gaze back to hers.

"Simple, _plain_," she seethed. "I'm _not_ a fucking cop, Kelham. I'm a _Spectre_. Search the dredges of your _feeble little mind_ and drag up what that _means_."

He blinked slowly, gasping for air around his gushing nose, his swollen mouth. When some of the fog died away to reveal understanding she nodded. Planting her forearm under his chin she grinned.

"I see we're finally on the same page here. I can quite happily cut you up right here in this room, Mr. Kelham. Want to see?"

Shifting just enough she drew her knife, pressing her forearm down just a little more on his throat. His eyes went huge when he saw the blade, and he snuffled wetly through the blood on his face before she caught the faint but telling scent of ammonia.

"Talid!" he gasped frantically. "Joram Talid!"

"That's the target?" she demanded.

"Yes! Yes! It's Talid!"

Lowering the knife she straightened, nodding toward Garrus and Thane. The turian headed for the door to inform Bailey as Thane walked over. His expression was inscrutable as Shepard tucked her knife away again.

"We need to find this Talid and get to him before Kolyat does," she told him.

"C-Can I go now?" the wetly sniffling Kelham asked. "A-are we done?"

"Yeah, and go change your pants," Shepard snapped at him. "They smell like piss."

Turning she strode toward the door, only to watch it slide open a breath before she reached it. The small, neatly appointed man there could only be Kelham's lawyer.

"You might want to clean your boy up," Shepard told him, pointing back at Kelham. "He had a bit of an accident. You'll want to advise him to consider a change of profession as well…or he's going to get a _second_ visit from me, and next time I won't be so nice."

The lawyer stared at the sobbing, strapped down man, face reddening. Shepard pushed past him without another glance, making a bee-line for Bailey.

"Joram Talid," she stated before he could even speak. He blinked at her, sitting back in his chair.

"Talid's a politician," he said. "Been campaigning. Says he's going to clean up crime on the Wards."

"Explains why Kelham would want him gone," Garrus nodded.

"Lots of people want him gone…most of them human."

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked.

"His political campaign is tightly tied into anti-human propaganda, and he makes no bones about the fact. He stirs up a lot of bad feelings, especially with Terra Firma. I'd have almost bet they'd be the ones to lay a price on his life."

"His politics aren't the point here," Shepard replied tersely. "We're trying to stop Thane's son, that's all. Do you know where we can find this Talid?"

"I know his usual haunts but it'll take time to pinpoint him. I'll put out a general request, get you to his usual neighborhood. If anyone from C-Sec spots him they'll send the message. Janey!"

"Yes sir?" a young officer looked around from her conversation.

"Bring a car around. Get these three to the 1800 blocks, and put out a BOLO on Joram Talid."

* * *

><p><em>Who would have thought there'd be spiders on the Citadel?<em> Shepard thought as she backhanded a cobweb away from her sweaty forehead, edging through the storage room.

_{Shepard, do you see him?}_

"Working on it!"

Reaching the far door she slapped the release, letting up a cloud of dust. No one had been here in a while…not even the Keepers by the look.

_Air filtration system must be faulty here…dust, spiders, gloom…it's like being back on Earth._

The door slid open and she hurried out, trailing billows of dust in a wake behind her. The fresh-air of the catwalks greeted her again, and she swiftly ran over to the railing, eyes scanning frantically over the public square below her.

This neighborhood was a bit higher end for the Wards. A beautiful fountain that was no doubt linked to the Presidium lakes shimmered and sprayed almost directly below her. Green potted plants lined the walls, and shimmering mosaics broken only by public comm terminals and power ads added an artistic touch to the area.

_{Shepard!}_

"C'mon…" she growled, before her eyes landed on the turian and his krogan bodyguard. "I see them! They're heading onto the apartment block right now."

_{Kolyat has to be close, we have to get in there.}_

"Coming down now…Garrus, ETA to the square?"

_{Five minutes, Shepard, I'm nearly there.}_

Shepard started to turn to find a way down when her eyes landed on the drell as he rose from a sit on one of the public benches. He had been obscured by one of the huge plants…and he most certainly was _not_ Thane.

"Fuck, I see him!"

_{Kolyat? Where?}_

"Fuck!" she swore again. The boy was only a few yards away, his path clearly aimed for Talid. In only minutes he would be right on them just as they passed into the apartment block. A quick shot and he'd be able to flee in any direction.

She had to get down _now._

Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the catwalk railing and leapt, swinging her body into the air and over the railing. A woman shopping nearby cried out in surprise as the human in body armor suddenly seemed to drop from the ceiling.

Shepard crashed into the fountain, praying it truly was linked to the lakes. If not, it would be horribly shallow and she was looking at a broken ankle or two at the very least. Of course, if it was _too_ deep the weight of her armor and weapons would drag her right to the bottom.

At her impact, water surged up in a wave, roiling out in a white fury of scattered gem-light before crashing over the polished floor. More than one civvie gasped in horrified surprise.

Shepard sank…but only just far enough that her head submerged. The instant the water closed over her face her boots hit the bottom and she recoiled, her leg muscles tightening and then shoving her back toward the surface in a tremendous heave.

Water surged outward once again as she resurfaced, her left arm swinging out and catching the edge of the fountain. Even as she heaved herself out, gaping faces all around her, she was whipping her pistol free of its holster, swinging it around.

Drenched, hair plastered in her face, teeth bared and eyes alight, Shepard barked out, "_**Kolyat!**_"

The drell boy whirled, staring at her, before he whipped back the other way. He lifted his gun, firing almost frantically at Talid, who had paused and looked back as well at the crash of water and the shout.

The distraction had allowed his bodyguard to intervene however. The krogan threw himself in front of the politician, taking two shots with his armor and the third to the leg. As he fell, fumbling for his weapon, Talid bolted into the apartment building, Kolyat on his heels.

The moment he started firing Shepard started running. Her instinct was to shoot him but the fact that he was Thane's son stayed her hand…she could not bring herself to kill the boy unless it became unavoidable. She was not far behind when Thane appeared, leaping over a partition and closing in to her side.

"You saw?" she gasped as she hit the door, pelting through it just in time to see Kolyat's heels disappear through another door on the far end.

"Yes," Thane panted. Neither slowed, shouts rising from outside in the plaza even as they hit the next door.

It was an apartment. Talid stood there in the center of the room, his hands laced on top of his head. Shepard could see the turian shaking. There was no sign of Kolyat but of course Del knew better.

Her pistol fixed on the turian man as she edged forward. A hand appeared on his shoulder, forcing him down to his knees.

_Mistake_, Shepard thought. Kolyat had been completely hidden behind the hostage. By making the man drop down to his knees, he was now exposed to shots from both Shepard and Thane.

Even so, his weapon was plastered to the back of Talid's head. Had he been anyone other than who he was, Shepard might have risked taking a shot, put one right between the drell's eyes. There was a chance that the weapon would drop without igniting. A _slim_ chance, of course… but a chance.

Instead she just kept her sights fixed. The kid wasn't a killer, that was the whole point. "Put the gun down," she said softly but sternly. "Put it down and no one gets hurt."

"N-no! I'm…I'm walking out of here. I'm taking him and I'm walking out of here!"

"Kolyat," Thane's voice was soft, but immediately drew the boy's attention. Confusion and then recognition passed over his features, a breath before they hardened.

"You? You're here _now_? Is this some kind of joke?"

"I just want to speak with you, Kolyat," Thane told him. "I know that you are angry, but what you are doing is a mistake. That anger is my doing. Your pain is my doing. Do not slay your future over my failings."

"Kolyat, this is not a burden you want to carry, _trust me_," Shepard added. "You take his life and you'll never be the same. Listen to your father. You do _not _want to do this."

"Why should I listen to him?" Kolyat growled. The muzzle of his pistol was shaking noticeably, but was still fixed to the back of Talid's head. "He has never said anything _worth_ listening too. He's never been around to _say_ anything worth listening too!"

"I know, and I am sorry," Thane told him. "Kolyat, I have wronged you…more than I can ever say."

Shepard's eyes shifted focus, from the boy to the lamp standing behind him. Water was still dripping to the carpet around her, falling from her hair and her armor, and she licked her lips slightly, her gaze moving back to the boy's eyes.

"I don't want to speak to you! We're walking out of here!" the younger drell insisted again.

"Fuck this," Shepard sniffed. Her aim shifted to the lamp and she fired, the shot sweeping by less than a foot from the boy's head. He heard the hiss of it, the bang of ignition and of the shot striking the lamp. As she had predicted, he startled, half turning toward the lamp with a gape on his face, his pistol swinging away from Talid.

Shepard was already in motion. Even as Kolyat started to turn back she was at his side, his eyes landing on her hardened features before her fist flashed up and his eyesight turned white. Shepard backhanded the pistol from Kolyat's grip as he stumbled. Grabbing Talid by the collar she hefted him up, then shoved him at the door. "Get the fuck out of here!"

Thane reached Kolyat's side, taking his arm as Shepard kicked the pistol away and stepped back.

"Kolyat…" Thane began. The boy snarled and tried to yank his arm away.

"Let go of me!"

"Shut up and listen," Shepard barked. "Your father is dying, Kolyat. Just give him _five minutes_ and _listen_."

"You're…" the boy's eyes widened, shifting back toward his father before they hardened again. "So…you're trying to make _peace_ or something is that it? You want my forgiveness?"

"No," Thane told him. "I do not deserve your forgiveness, but neither do you deserve this path. Kolyat…I am a terrible father. Your mother…I should have been there. I made mistakes. I own them. I am not asking for you to forgive me, that doesn't matter. What matters is your _life_. You are the only good thing I have ever done, son. The only beauty I ever added to this galaxy."

Shepard heard running footsteps and whipped around, lifting her pistol. Bailey and half a dozen C-Sec officers came charging in, weapons ready.

"Hey, easy," she said, holding up her free hand before lowering her weapon. "It's in hand."

Bailey gestured and the guns lowered. "Talid's outside, unhurt," he said. "Boy there took some potshots out in public, though. I'm gonna have to take him in."

Shepard turned back, reaching out and taking Thane's shoulder. "Come on. You guys can talk at the station."

The older drell nodded, stepping back as Shepard took Kolyat's arm firmly. As she steered him toward Bailey she growled in his ear.

"Your father doesn't have to be here _at all_. If he didn't care, you'd never have seen him again. Just give him five fucking minutes. For your mother's memory, if nothing else."

The boy looked at her with glossed eyes, before Shepard released him. Bailey measured him, then nodded. "I don't think cuffs will be necessary. C'mon son. This way."

As Thane and Kolyat were escorted out, Garrus appeared in the door, huffing and out of breath. He looked at the officers and the two drell, then glanced crestfallen at Shepard. "I missed it, didn't I?"

Then he blinked, staring at her. "You're soaking wet-"

"You want a fucking lollipop for noticing? I'm docking your pay for your tardiness," Shepard replied with a snort, wiping her clinging hair back. "Bring me a towel and you just _might_ get all the way back on my good side, Vakarian."

* * *

><p>Shepard stood in the midst of the C-Sec office shedding pieces of her armor, a towel slung around her head. Because the armor was air-tight her clothes beneath it were more or less dry. Garrus sat nearby watching her. A few of the other officers were watching as well, trying not to appear obvious about it.<p>

Thane and Kolyat had been taken into the back room by Bailey and his men. As Shepard scrubbed the towel over her hair, he re-emerged, walking over.

"They're talking," he said simply, leaning on the wall and folding his arms, before he smirked. "Right in the fountain, Shepard?"

"Fastest way down," she replied, draping the towel around her shoulders as she finger-combed her hair back.

"Fastest way to drown or break your back," he replied. "You're lucky that fountain was just as deep as it was or you'd have shattered both your legs. Still, you saved Talid's life."

"I'm tougher than I look, and that wasn't the point," Shepard told him. He nodded with a hmm, watching her quietly as she picked up her armor piece by piece, drying them off. After a moment she lifted her brows pointedly at him. "You wanna take a picture?"

He shrugged. "Be worse things to take a picture of," he admitted. "That's not why I'm staring though. I'm starting to see why they made you the first human Spectre."

"That so?"

"You got guts. Kind of guts it's rare to see around this place."

Shepard said nothing, only continued to dry her gear. Fortunately her weapons couldn't be hurt by just a little water. Not like in the old days where getting your weapon wet was a death-sentence. After a moment she turned her dark eyes back on Bailey.

"What are you going to do with the kid?" she asked.

"Well, he took a few shots. Not something we can just let go. It's a shame…I see so many kids come in here whose parents are gone or just don't give a damn. His father at least is trying."

"Give him a job," Shepard shrugged, finishing with her rifle and tossing the towel on the back of the chair.

"A what?"

"Kid needs guidance, needs a good path to follow," Shepard said as she started to gear up again. "Let him do some community service, help out around here. Learn how the good guys do it. Better than throwing him into prison to rot…that's just a waste."

"I'll…think about it," he nodded.

"Good. Now, I have one more question to ask of you."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Where's Fade?"

As she asked, Garrus sat up a little, paying closer attention. Bailey blinked.

"Fade? That irritating little punk? Wish I could tell you. I'd love to see him get slammed into a bulkhead or two."

"You don't know anything about how to find him?"

He shrugged. "Few leads but whenever we follow up he goes to ground. I think he's got ties on the inside…either that or he's fucking psychic. He always seems to know when we start seriously sniffing on his trail."

He scratched at his chin thoughtfully, nails making a sound like sandpaper through his five o'clock shadow. "If that's true though, then someone outside C-Sec would have a better chance of closing in on him. You seeking to rough him up?"

"We just need some information from him," Garrus supplied.

"Won't stop me from dragging his ass back here," Shepard offered with a sharp grin. "Bit of a thank you, maybe…for your help with Thane and his son?"

"That's a thank you I could live with," Bailey grinned. "All right. Scuttlebutt says he's got a contact. I'll tell you how to find him. Press him a little and you may be able to get in with Fade. Just convince him you're looking to do business."

Shepard finished with the last of her hard-suit, hefting on her weapons-pack again. Glancing toward the closed door she said, "We'll give them time. Let Thane know where we went."

"Will do. I'll be monitoring the comm if you find Fade and want to give me a heads-up on where to collect him."

Getting the location, Shepard headed out of C-Sec with Garrus falling into step beside her. "Thank you for doing this, Shepard. Are…you ok? You seem a little…"

"What?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Just…not yourself, I guess."

"Garrus, I died, was possessed by a man being tortured by his own brother, had my eyes torn out, visited the scene of my own death, and came face to face with a good friend who thinks I'm a fucking traitor. To top it all off, Rupert was out of caffeinated this morning, so _yeah_…I'm _slightly _on the edgy side at the moment. Go fucking figure."

Garrus regarded her and then nodded. "Liara will be all right, Shepard."

She looked at him, and for a moment her dark eyes were more vulnerable than he'd ever seen them to be. "Yeah," she murmured. "I know she will be."

Then she straightened a little, her gaze steeling once more. "C'mon. We need to snag a cab if we're going to find this Fade."

Yet another unbelievably pretentious name for what would likely turn out to be another unbelievably pretentious asshole like Fist.

* * *

><p>"<em>Thug?" <em>

_Eír crossed the courtyard from the athenaeum, the hot Tuchankan sun bathing her face and shoulders. Behind her, the curtains of flowers that masked the entrance to the inner sanctum shifted and stirred, the breeze softly touched with their fragrance._

_Beyond the edge of the broken wall, the landscape sailed in dry, shattered crags, all traces of green vanishing. As she approached the edge, she could see the large, dark shadow picking its way down the rocky hillside._

"_Thug?" she called again, but the young krogan didn't look back. With a frown of concern, the young asari started down the hillside after him. Why wasn't he answering?_

"_Thug!"_

"_**Eír!"**_

_Terror, fear, and pain punctuated the scream that suddenly erupted behind her. Whirling, the girl's eyes went wide as she realized the athenaeum was on fire. Scrambling back up the hillside, she cried out._

"_Shrive!"_

"_**Eír!"**_

_The hard rocky soil had gone soft and sandy, and her feet and hands dug into it as she frantically tried to climb. It slid out from underneath her faster than she could compensate, and for all the effort she was putting in to going forward, she was only slipping further and further back._

"_Shrive!" she cried again. The flames were lifting higher into the sky, consuming the building. Abandoning the slope she desperately tried to use her biotics. If she could encase herself she could lift her body effortlessly right up the hill. She could drive the flames back, rescue Shrive!_

_Each attempt, however, only resulted in pain…burning and cramping, it flooded through her and she cried out. Her hands fumbled for her waist only to find the smooth metal of the cinch holding her fast._

_Sobbing, she turned to find another way up, then gasped._

_Gellian stood there. Her hair was greasy and lank, her eyes sunk in hollows. Her lips were pale and cracked, lined with sores. Her gaze was feverish, unreal. A collar made of broken jags of metal was wound around her throat, attached to a leash. On the end of the leash behind her stood a cadaverous form, ten feet tall, putrid, and all too familiar._

_Shepard crouched, her already rictus grin stretching wider, her eyes aflame. Her giggle was high-pitched, surreal._

"_You should have listened to me, Eír," Gellian whispered as the flesh began to char and ash off her body, baring dry and grinning bone. "You should have listened…"_

Eír jolted awake with a gasp, her familiar room and blankets almost snapping into place around her as sleep was banished for consciousness. Her hand plastered to her chest, fingers digging in as if she sought to tear her own heart out for a moment. Each breath seemed on fire but as she abandoned dream for reality, her lungs seemed to ease.

"Oh…" she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks with a shudder. Taking a few deep breaths she wiped them away, then looked around.

"Shrive?"

The bed and room were both empty, gold slants of sunlight streaming in the window. Casting the blanket aside she padded to the small bathroom. Filling the sink, she gathered handfuls of cold water, splashing them over her face before blotting it with a towel. She could not meet her own gaze in the mirror.

Stepping from the bedroom and into the living room, she was struck by how quiet it was. There was no smell of cooking breakfast, no light music…nothing.

"Shrive?" she called again. Perhaps it was the residue of her dream, but fear was staring to tangle her gut. "Shrive? Where are you?"

As she turned to head for the console she noticed a small datapad was flashing on the kitchen counter. Going over she picked it up, activating it…and letting out a breath of relief as she read the note.

_They called me in early today. Should be home for lunch. Didn't want to wake you._

Setting it down, she wiped a hand over her face.

_Eír, stop being so silly. It was just a bad dream, nothing more. You aren't a child, and Shrive can more than take care of herself._

Shaking her head, she headed back toward the bathroom. She'd get a hot shower, some breakfast…maybe do some shopping for lunch if Shrive was going to be home to eat with her. She wasn't going to let her whole day be ruined by some silly dream.

As she vanished back into the bedroom the small closet at the far end of the living space slid open, four eyes glittering out of the darkness.


	50. Chapter 50

"Belki, _what_ are you doing?"

The echo of gunfire along the training line faded away as Shrive started forward, the asari's eyes narrowed as they fixed upon one man at the end. The young batarian blinked at her, straightening as he lowered his pistol.

"Ma'am?"

"Lift your weapon again, and aim it," she ordered. The boy obeyed, holding the pistol out with one hand as he aimed it at the holographic target…sideways.

"Do you want to lose an eye?" Shrive demanded as she halted at his side. He scoffed a little.

"_What?"_

"Go ahead. Fire. Let us see it."

Grimacing a little in confusion, he set himself and began to pull the trigger. The holographic interface reported the scattered shots as they peppered over the target, and after three or four he halted.

"No, do not stop," Shrive ordered. "Keep firing."

The whole line was watching them in puzzled curiosity now. Belki shifted his stance a little, then resumed firing. After a dozen more shots his thermal overheated and reflexively he hit the release to pop it, the mechanism automatically ratcheting another into place.

The spent thermal spat out the side of the gun…exactly as designed. Unfortunately as the gun was being held at a cant, instead of sailing harmlessly away to the right, the thermal flipped directly toward the young batarian's face.

The white hot chunk of metal halted less than an inch from Belki's lower right eye, caught in a small biotic field. Shrive let him stare at it in shock a moment before she let it drop.

Reaching out, she pointedly grabbed his wrist and righted the weapon. "Vids _lie_," she said, looking at him but speaking to the whole line. "It may _look_ cool when you hold your gun like that but no one is going to care how cool you might have looked when you're on the ground dead or blinded by a spent thermal. Not to mention you cannot aim or brace properly from that stance. Look at your cluster! Your target has a dozen holes scattered all over the place, _none_ in a vital spot. You don't want to waste half your ammo trying to drop one target. There are only three points to aim at."

Taking the weapon from his hand she aimed and fired. The first shot landed on the target's waist. "Shield generator," she said.

Her next shot landed in the target's chest. "Heart."

The third, right in the middle of its forehead. "Brain."

Lowering her weapon, she then instructed. "Unless they are krogan. Then you aim for the hollow of the throat or the eyes. Remember, a krogan can take a shot directly to one heart and keep on coming."

She pressed the weapon back into Belki's hand and nodded. "Now resume."

As she stepped back the line began to fire again, and this time the boy was holding his weapon properly, one hand bracing the butt to keep it steady.

She caught sight of a form heading her direction and turned her head, nodding in greeting. "Teful?"

"Shrive," the older batarian told her, his face grim. She blinked at the expression.

"What is it?"

"There's been…an _incident_. At your home."

* * *

><p>The door to the small prefab on the edge of the colony was standing open, a half dozen batarians clustered around. Shrive's face was grim as she stepped into the house, already smelling the thick odor of blood.<p>

In the midst of the living room, indefinable shapes littered the floor, covered with a sheet that was already soaked. Stepping carefully around it, Shrive headed back toward the bedroom, one of the batarians nodding at her as she stepped past.

"She won't let anyone near her," he informed even as Shrive headed toward the corner by the bed.

Eír was sitting in the space between mattress and wall, her knees drawn up. One cheek and her shirt were smeared with red, and her skin was shimmering with biotics. The moment her lavender eyes lifted and spotted Shrive, she surged up, flinging her arms tightly around her as the biotic fire died.

Holding her just as tightly, Shrive could feel her trembling. "Eír…it's all right…what happened?"

"I killed him," Eír gasped in return. "He came in the bedroom, tried to shoot me…I didn't even think-"

As she broke off the batarian officer spoke up. "Apparently he broke in here. There are a few in the colony who aren't that…_fond_ of having aliens here. Guess one decided to make an impression of his displeasure. Near as we can tell her biotics not only put him right through the door, they tore him into pieces. Wish I could say I was sorry but…he deserved it."

"He didn't hurt you?" Shrive asked. Eír shook her head, not loosening her grip.

She had never killed someone before. Animals, yes…but not an actual _person_. She had been conditioned for it, of course, and had very nearly killed Shrive herself in confusion about what she was feeling…but this was the first time the deed was actually done. Self-defense or not, conditioning or not, unless a person had no heart or soul, killing another sentient being was not something anyone ever took well the first time around.

"I need to get her out of here," Shrive told the officer.

"We'll need her to talk to later."

"Teful will know how to reach me," Shrive replied. He nodded.

"All right. Take her out through the back."

Shrive, gripping Eír's hand tightly, paused only long enough to gather a change of clothing before she wound her arm around her love's shoulders, ushering her out the back door. A neighbor, Mika, was hanging out of her door with curiosity. Seeing the pair she waved them forward and ushered them inside.

"Is she hurt?" she asked.

"No, just scared. Can we use your bathroom?"

"Of course!"

The batarian woman indicated the far door and Shrive urged Eír that direction, sitting her down before closing the door behind them.

Washing her face of blood and then helping her out of her clothes, Shrive kept looking at the other woman's eyes with concern. "Eír? It's all right. It's over now."

"He wanted to kill me…" Eír murmured in wonder, baffled. "Why…why would he _do_ that?"

"Hatred is never rational," Shrive replied. "You know that."

"I just…I hit him and he came apart…the blood-"

"It wasn't your fault. You were just defending yourself," Shrive insisted. Cupping the other girl's face she stroked her thumbs over her cheeks. "It wasn't your fault."

Eír looked at her and something shifted in her eyes. Something dark that chilled Shrive to the bone. A faint smile appeared.

"Will Shepard do that?" Eír whispered almost longingly. "When I kill her, will she…"

"Eír!"

The younger asari blinked, then shuddered, grief coming over her face. "Oh…I can't believe…why did I _say_ that…?"

As she broke down, Shrive hugged her tightly, possessively, fighting her own tears. "It's all right, Eír. It's _all right_…"

* * *

><p>Bullets spat in a thick rain, singing against the wall as Shepard ducked back behind the corner, popping out a heat sink and slamming another one into place. "Goddamn heavy," she growled under her breath. "Garrus! I need you to draw its fire! <em>Be careful<em>!"

_{Understood!}_

Across the vast warehouse Garrus suddenly appeared from around his own cover, peppering the mech with shot. As it whirled to orient on him, Shepard darted out of cover and rushed up to it.

Her knife flashed out, slicing through the hydraulic feeds at the back of its waist as she ran past. Fluid spit onto the ground and the mech half sagged to one side, its shot going wild. It tried to turn and she darted back the other way, leaping up onto its back. Hauling her weight upward she grabbed hold of its head, planted her feet against its shoulders, and heaved.

The mech, head craned back, waved its huge arms wildly, firing blindly at the ceiling. Shepard's muscles bulged as she put all her strength into the pull, and she heard silicone and tubes reluctantly start to tear.

As the thing stumbled a little, Garrus ran out of cover, his grenade launcher in his hands. "Fire, Shepard!" he barked.

Instantly she released her grip, shoving off with her feet and flinging herself out of range as Garrus lobbed a shot right at the mech's wrenched neck.

The grenade hit and exploded in a bark of flame, the mech's head flying almost straight up into the air as its shoulders and part of one arm dissolved into shrapnel. Shepard rolled as she hit the ground, whipping back around with her pistol in hand, aimed at the thing. She lowered it a moment later as it was clear the mech was down for good, then nodded at Garrus.

"Come on, let's get up to that control room before he finds a hole to crawl into," the turian sniffed. As he stepped past the smoking mech, he kicked a piece of its torn framework away with a scowl.

Shepard reached the door of the control room, carefully peeking around. The fucker was standing at the controls, straining to see out the cracked and smoky window…no doubt trying to figure out where they were. Rounding the corner she had her pistol site fixed on his temple in a heartbeat.

"_Don't move_."

He gaped at her, then skipped backward a few steps, toward the far door. "Fuck that!"

As he turned to run, Garrus stepped in the door and landed the butt of his rifle right in the human man's chin. Grabbing hold of him as he stumbled, Garrus slammed him back into the wall. Shepard straightened with a cold grin.

"You were saying?'

"Aw, c'mon Shepard…we can _talk _about this!"

"Harkin, the only thing I want to talk about is _business_," Garrus snarled dangerously. "You helped a turian named Sidonis disappear. I need him to _reappear_."

"Yeah, I don't do that," Harkin grimaced. "That gets real dangerous in my line of work."

Shepard glared at him. Harkin had always been an ass. The first time they'd met, she'd bounced his head off a bar when he'd tried to grab her ass. He'd been a dirty cop back then…now he was a dirty _ex-_cop. It explained his connections with C-Sec and how he had been able to avoid them so astutely.

"You know what _else_ gets real dangerous, Harkin?" she pointed out, eyes narrowing. "_Us_."

"Tell me where Sidonis is or else we'll discover whether or not your knees can bend the other direction," Garrus threatened.

"Ok! Ok! _Jesus_, Vakarian, ease up! He's on the Citadel! Let me give him a call, arrange a meeting."

"No tricks," the turian glared before stepping back, shoving the man toward a console.

Shepard watched him warily as Harkin wiped a hand over his mouth, trying to regain his dignity a bit as he accessed the console. Garrus watching over his shoulder closely, he texted a message off.

_Identity has been compromised. Meet agent at Garden Plaza, will issue new one. 1300 hours._

As he waited for a response he glanced around at Shepard. She saw the flicker of lewdness appear in his eyes even as he started to speak. "I see you still fill-"

"Your life depends on you _not_ finishing that sentence," she warned. He blinked, then swallowed and nodded. A moment later the console blinked, and he looked back toward it.

"Ok, he'll be there," he said, half-stepping aside so Garrus could see the response. "All right, happy? You got what you wanted."

"Almost," Garrus told him. "There's also a little matter of a favor we owe Captain Bailey. Seems he's been looking for you for a while-"

"Oh _fuck_ no!"

Garrus stepped aside a pace as Harkin stupidly turned to run again. Shepard stepped up, catching his arm and whirling him around.

He spun swinging, his fist lifting toward her face. The blow missed her as she leaned to one side, her own fist digging swift and hot into his gut. As he coughed, folding forward, she palmed the back of his head again and bounced it on the console.

He collapsed with a groan, and she straddled him, wrenching his arms back, before glancing up at Garrus with amusement.

"You'd think the fucker'd _learn_."

* * *

><p>The turian sat nervously at the far end of the plaza. The crosshairs hovered over his skull as the scope zoomed in tight. Shepard's eye narrowed a little. "I see him," she told Garrus. He swiveled his own scope around to match hers, then nodded.<p>

"Yeah, that's him," he said with a growl. "Too far to hit from this vantage. We have to bring him in closer."

Shepard straightened, lowering her sniper and shipping it as Garrus straightened. "You can go down to talk to him, get him to move this direction a bit more. Once he's in range I'll take the shot."

Looking out over the railing, she tilted her head from side to side to crack her neck before she suddenly whipped around. Garrus, taken completely by surprise, was on the ground even before he realized she was in motion. In less than the space of a single breath, he was pinned.

"Shepard! What the-"

"Shut the _fuck up_ and _listen_ to me," Shepard replied. "I'm not letting you snipe a man from the shadows like a fucking coward!"

Garrus gaped. "Wh-what? Shepard, he betrayed me, killed my men! He deserves to die! What would you do if someone killed your crew…killed _Liara_…?"

"I'd at least have the fucking balls to look them in the _eye_," Shepard shot back. "You want to do this, you look him _in the fucking eye_, Garrus! You don't know what happened. He drew you away, the mercs swept in to wipe out your team…I got that. How do you know they didn't put a fucking gun to his head?"

Garrus bore his teeth, lifting his head a little until the two of them were almost nose to nose. "Then he's a goddamn coward! I would have given my _life_ before betraying my team!"

"And _you're_ not a coward _now_? You want to lurk in the shadows and blow his brains out…you do _that_ and I'm done with you. I don't work with craven _children_!"

"Shepard!" Garrus was shocked. She really thought he was a coward? "You know I'm not like that-"

"I'm starting to wonder," she replied. "You don't know the _whole story_, Garrus. You don't know why he did what he did. Maybe it wasn't his life threatened. Maybe they threatened his family. You _don't know_! You're willing to try and execute a man without all the facts!"

"I-…"

"I'm not trying to stop you," she said more softly. "I just want you to stop and _think_ for a minute, all right? You're my friend. You're a _good _man, Garrus. No matter what he's done, what his motivation…if you let Sidonis change that in you then he's won regardless, dong ma?"

The turian looked up into her eyes, then nodded grimly. "All right, Shepard. We'll do it your way. I'll…talk to him first."

"Good."

She got to her feet, offering her hand to help him up. As he rose she smirked. "I knew you had to have sense in there _somewhere_, Vakarian."

He gave her a withering look, but couldn't hide the faint smirk. Clapping him on the shoulder she then pointed. "There's an alleyway just to the north. I'll go down, talk him into it. Then you two can _chat_."

* * *

><p>Shepard knew a beaten man when she saw one, and watching Sidonis across the plaza…it was clear he was a beaten man. Catching his eye she gestured at him, stepping back toward the alleyway. She could see the wary expression on his face but he was also desperate.<p>

_He'll be weighing this_, she thought, watching him. _I'm_ _human, not turian. That'll put him a little at ease…question is, at ease __**enough**__ to trust me?_

She had her answer only a few moments later as he finally rose and headed her way. Stepping back into the alley she leaned against one wall, waiting until he'd entered.

"Fade sent me," she said, straightening. Sidonis nodded weakly.

"Where's he want me to go? He said he was correcting my identity…"

"He is, we should have a new name fully set up for you in a few minutes." As she spoke she took a step to the left. It seemed a casual enough movement but it put her between him and the exit for the alley.

"Does he know who compromised my-"

He cut off as Garrus rounded the corner, pistol aimed at his face. If it was possible for a turian to go pale, Sidonis did as his eyes widened, his back plastering to the wall.

"Please…no, please…" he sputtered. Shepard gave Garrus a stern look, then looked at the frightened man they'd lured in.

"Calm down," she told him. "You two need to have a talk."

Stepping away but staying within quick lunge reach, Shepard half-watched the two men, and half-watched the entrance to the alley to make sure they weren't about to be 'interrupted'.

"Garrus, please..." Sidonis urged. "I…I can't tell you how sorry I am-"

"Not as sorry as you _deserve_ to be," Garrus snarled. "_Good men_, Sidonis. _Good men_ are dead because of you!"

"You think I don't know that? They were my _friends_, Garrus…I…I see them whenever I close my eyes. Their voices haunt me-"

"_Why_," Garrus urged angrily. "Just…just tell me _why_!"

"I wasn't strong enough," the other man murmured. "They got to me, cornered me. Threatened…I was…"

"That's it? They just _threatened_ you? You _are_ a goddamn coward!"

"Garrus," Shepard warned, hearing the tension in his voice. Mandibles working furiously, he took a deep breath, his eyes fixed to his enemy.

"Give me _one_ reason you don't deserve to die for what you did. Right here, _right now_."

Sidonis took a shuddering breath, then forced himself to look at his former friend. "There isn't a reason to give," he said softly. "I made a mistake, and it's haunted me since. I was frightened…but you're right. That isn't an excuse. Truth is…I don't deserve to be alive, not after what I've done. You're right, Garrus. I…looked up to you. I looked up to _them_. I finally had a purpose in life, I was doing something good and…well. There aren't any words. Just…"

He sighed heavily, lowering his head. "I understand," he murmured. "It doesn't make it right, but know that I _am_ sorry."

Shepard could see Garrus wrestling with himself. Turning toward the two she drew her own pistol and stepped forward, pressing it against Sidonis's head. "Step back, Garrus," she said neutrally.

The turian straightened with a blink. "Shepard, what are you doing?"

"He confessed," she told him calmly. "He had no good excuse. You've had your trial. He deserves execution. Justice needs to be met. My hands are bloody enough, I'll do it."

"What?" Garrus blinked at her. Ruthless and hotheaded as she _could_ be, he would never have expected her to do something like this. Stepping forward he lowered his own gun, taking hold of her arm and hoping that she wouldn't decide to shoot him too in response. "Shepard, stop."

"Why?" she asked, never taking her eyes off of Sidonis. Despite the weight of Garrus's hand on her arm, she did not lower her pistol. "He's guilty. Deserves to die, right? What does it matter if you do it or I do it?"

"Because it isn't right! This isn't justice!" Garrus blurted, then blinked. His hand slipped away from her arm and he looked down. Shepard lifted her brows, then lowered her gun.

"Get out of here, Sidonis," she told him. "Go on."

The man blinked at her, then nodded. Turning, he headed down the alley, soon vanishing from sight. Shipping her pistol she looked at Garrus. After a moment, his mandibles tightened and he looked up at her.

Without a word, she lifted her eyebrows, giving him an expression of concern. He nodded once, clearing his throat.

"Ok," he said simply. Shepard gave him a small smile, then lightly gripped his upper arm.

"_Ok_."

* * *

><p>As they headed across the docks toward the <em>Normandy<em>, Shepard nodded toward Thane who was lingering nearby, looking out the huge windows. Giving Garrus a gesture she broke off from his side and headed to the drell.

"Thane, you all right? Get things straightened out?" she asked.

He glanced at her, then over at Garrus as the turian disappeared into the airlock, before returning his gaze to the human woman. "We…had a good long talk," he told her. "It will be some time before anything is truly…_straightened out_, as you say, but it is a start. I have you to thank for that."

"I'm just glad things turned out all right," Shepard replied.

"You…are a very interesting person, Commander," he told her, meeting her eyes. "You are hard and gruff, never afraid to hit, to shoot, to jump into the fray. Yet you look out for the best interests of those around you, even those you have no reason to help…and every reason _not_ to."

She snorted, shaking her head. "I'm not interesting, Thane. I'm just a soldier, another meat-head."

"I have met meat-heads before, siha. You are…different."

"Siha?" Shepard asked warily. When he just looked at her, she hmmed suspiciously. Before she could speak again, however, her ear-bud came to life.

_{Commander, Miranda.}_

"What is it, Miranda?" she asked, half-turning as she touched the bud.

_{Commander, David is awake and communicative. He was asking to see you.}_

"I'm on the dock. I'll be right in. Shepard out."

"Go and see to the boy, Shepard," Thane told her. "I will return aboard shortly. I just…need to think for a little while."

Nodding, she gave him a companionable clap on the shoulder, and headed for the airlock. Once inside she only took enough time to shed her hard-suit and stow it before she aimed for the infirmary.

Helen greeted her the moment she stepped in, gesturing toward the man sitting on one of the further bio-beds. "He's stable and out of pain," she reported. "He seems to be in good enough spirits, almost cheerful, but he hasn't stopped talking about you since he opened his eyes."

Stepping past, Shepard walked over to the young man on the bed. Some patches on his skull and arms were still healing, angry red where the leads had been plugged, but he smiled as he saw her, guileless joy shining in his eyes.

"Hello, David," she smiled back.

"Hello," he greeted. "You are the one that made it quiet. You are the Shepard."

"Just…Shepard. No 'the'," she chuckled. "You're the one that really did it, David. We couldn't have stopped the AI without your help."

"No…you fought him. You were stronger than I was."

His face fell a little, and he lowered his gaze, rubbing at the marks on his arms. Shepard shook her head, going over and sitting beside him.

"No," she said softly to him. "You were very strong, David. _You_ are a hero."

He blinked at her, then smiled a little. "I am?"

"Definitely," she told him.

He grinned, then announced, "I liked the blue girl. She was pretty."

"Yeah, you can say that twice," Del smirked. "That was Liara."

"Liara. She was very nice to me. Is she here?"

"No, she had to…go back to work," Shepard told him. "David, we're going to take you to a school. Nice people, nice teachers, students who are smart like you are. Perhaps when you get there Li and I can come and visit you."

"That would be nice," he told her. "Do they do math?"

"They do. Math, and biotics, and science, and sociology…anything you could want to learn. They'll take care of you."

He nodded, looking at some vague point a few feet in front of him. "Gavin is in trouble, isn't he?"

"Yes," Shepard told him gently. "He's in…a _lot_ of trouble."

He nodded again, then shifted. "I think I will sleep now. I don't want to talk anymore."

"I understand," she murmured, then got to her feet, watching as he curled up with his back to her. She felt her anger rise at his brother again. How he could hurt an innocent like that…one that depended on him? She would _never _comprehend it.

* * *

><p>The <em>Normandy<em> had departed the Citadel on course for Grissom Academy, and the hour was growing late. Shepard, her face reddened, strode out of the lift and across the hall into the Nest, a wry smirk twisting her lips. She had a cup of tea in one hand, and on her shoulder, Rat held on to a few strands of her hair, completely nonplussed.

"She's not going to speak to me for _weeks_," Shepard lamented to herself as she entered her quarters, striding down past her office, plucking the rodent off her shoulder and slipping her back into her habitat. Wiping a hand over her face she heard her omni-tool chime and glanced at it. Lifting a brow she strode over to the open floor in front of the bed and activated the projector.

Liara appeared electronically in the middle of the room, looking sheepish. "I am sorry, Shepard," she said. "I did not realize until I had already sent the call how late it was. I…did not wake you?"

"No, I was just getting some tea," she replied, smirking. Liara lifted an eyebrow.

"What is so amusing?"

Shepard chuckled, shaking her head. "Well, as it was so _late_ and all, I took Rat down with me when I went to get my tea…"

Liara's face brightened with realization. "Let me guess. Miranda."

"The woman's always up before the crack of dawn, I figured she'd be in the sack," Shepard defended. "There I am, pouring my tea and next thing I know Miranda is there wanting to discuss the communication she had with the Academy. I tried to keep my right side turned toward her but sure enough, she spotted Rat and next thing I know, she's on the far end of the galley, spouting curses even _I _didn't know existed!"

Liara giggled, then shook her head. "I suppose I should not laugh-"

"No, you seriously _should_," Shepard grinned. "It was funny as fucking hell, though I don't think _she_ sees it that way. I promised I'd keep Rat away from her."

Liara giggled again. Del smiled at her. "Well, I'm just hoping that she doesn't try and wreak some horrible vengeance upon me. Anyway. I wasn't expecting a call from you this soon. Not that I'm complaining, but…everything ok?"

"Oh…yes, everything is all right," Liara replied. "I just wanted to let you know that we have received the schematics, and Sydney is quite confident we will be able to develop and implement the upgrades within the next couple of weeks. It is just a matter of getting the resources to the Folly. She…also sent me word that she will be returning here within a day or two…and she is bringing a guest."

"A guest?" Shepard asked, her brows knitting. "I trust Syd but…the fewer people that know where you are the better."

Liara smiled slightly. "I know you want to protect me, Shepard, but you either trust Sydney or you do not. If you did not, she and her men would not be here at all."

Shepard grumbled, a scowl on her face, before she nodded once. "What'd she say about this 'guest'."

"Only that her name is Deirdre Navis," Liara told her. "She seems to think she could be valuable. What she did not tell me is that she is asari and brings a great deal of monetary resources to the table."

"Your broker talents dredged that up, I suppose?"

"Not exactly. The name Navis is quite famous on Thessia. Her family line is extensive and wealthy. They have great influence and I suppose you would call them…celebrities. Deirdre's grandmother was one of the pivotal heroes of the Krogan Rebellions…I would not recommend Navis go anywhere near Wrex. Tevos, the asari Councilor, has ties to the Navis family as well."

"Hmm," Shepard reluctantly nodded. Such a resource could indeed be valuable, and she really did trust Sydney…she just didn't like taking risks with Liara's safety, even small ones.

"I will be fine, Shepard," Liara promised softly. "I…should let you rest. I will talk to you again soon."

"Yeah," Shepard sighed. "All right, Tianlán. Sweet dreams."

"To you too," the asari murmured, before the call disconnected and her image vanished. Lowering her arm, Shepard's shoulders slumped, weariness settling over her like a cloak.

* * *

><p>Feron paused in the doorway as Liara regarded the holographic image of Shepard in front of her, not wishing to interrupt.<p>

"Yeah," Shepard sighed. "All right, Tianlán. Sweet dreams."

"To you too," the asari murmured, before disconnecting. The moment Shepard's image vanished, Liara's whole being seemed to slump ever so slightly. She lowered her head, rubbing the bridge of her nose lightly.

"You all right?" Feron asked tentatively. She turned and looked at him, then sighed.

"I am fine, Feron," she told him. "I just…I am fine."

He didn't press, although he knew better. He also knew there was no cure for what was bothering her, save miraculously transporting the human commander into this room. "Ori finally has a handle on that power transfer problem," he told her. "The new reports also came in from Nos Astra, Fekel, Derbis and Tuchanka."

"Thank you, Feron. I will go over them as soon as I get a chance."

"You should rest first. Get something to eat," he told her. "I am not going to be the one to explain to Commander Shepard why you are an exhausted, gaunt wreck the next time she sees you."

Liara smiled tiredly at him. "I will try. Thank you Feron."

He inclined his head in a nod, then turned and walked out, sighing as he rubbed a hand over his head.


	51. Chapter 51

Metal sang off of metal, and lips parted into a feral grin. Whirling, the blade sliced through the air, only to ring against another once more.

"So _close_…" her opponent taunted.

Shepard whipped out with the blade again, and again it was stopped. Kasumi tsked with amusement.

"_Seriously_, Shepard…?"

"Fucking _hold still_!"

The two women surged into one another again, blades wicking and snapping in the bright lights of the small gym. A hiss punctuated one sliding just past the thief's stomach a breath before she whirled and struck out.

Shepard hit the ground with a bark of air, then froze as the edge of Kasumi's katana moved up under her chin. The thief smiled down at her. "I win."

"I hate you _so_ much," Shepard panted. Kasumi laughed before stepping back, allowing Shepard to push herself into a sit.

"Don't," she told her. "I've been training with swords almost my whole life, Shepard. We're two different kinds of warrior, you and I. You're a tank, I'm a sniper. It just is what it is. You've come a very long way very quickly, but you will _always_ be a tank, and I will _always_ be a sniper."

Shepard grunted, picking up her katana and getting to her feet. It was true. Though Shepard had graduated from wood practice swords to the real thing, she had never beaten Kasumi in a blade fight. Of course, Kasumi had never beaten Shepard in boxing either, so it was a fair trade off.

Kasumi's style was like flowing water. The woman shifted and moved so fluidly, relying on finesse and grace and speed. Shepard's natural inclination had always been to charge in and land as much power in a blow as she could…a hammer, more than water. She had learned some level of finesse and was fairly confident now with the katana but a gun or her fist would always be her more comfortable choice.

_You can't turn a krogan into an asari_, she thought, cracking her neck. Still, the blade was incredibly useful. She intended to make room for it on her weapons-pack, for those special occasions when a fist or a bullet just wouldn't do.

Sheathing the sword she offered, "Boxing?"

Kasumi laughed, shaking her head as she took a drink from her water bottle. "No thank you, Shep. Not until your eyes are _yours_ again, I think."

Shepard lifted a brow. "What the fuck have my _eyes_ got to do with anything?"

"I don't know if you're _aware_ of this but you get kind of intent when you box," Kasumi told her, leaning on the wall. "Your focus is almost like a physical thing, and look in your eyes…it's downright _spooky_. You can _feel _it. It's bad enough with your natural eyes but with those things? I feel like you're about to download my brain."

Shepard roared with laughter, and Kasumi lifted her eyebrows. "It's not funny," she insisted. "It's like…creepy _plus ten_."

"Nah," Shepard grinned. "I was just thinking, if I actually _could _download a brain, I'd pick one with a bit more in it, that's all."

"Ooh!" Kasumi flung her towel at Shepard, who laughed again. "That's it. You're off my Christmas card list."

"Go take a shower, Goto, you smell like shit," Shepard ordered, still chuckling.

"At least I won't still _look_ like it once I've washed, unlike _some_ people," Kasumi shot back with a smirk, then winked. "See you later, Shep."

"Yeah, yeah," Shepard grinned. As the thief left, the commander sat down on the bench, resting her katana beside her and taking a deep breath, wiping a hand over her sweaty face. It was good to laugh, but it still seemed so brief, and didn't move deep enough…not nearly deep enough to banish that tight little knot of black in her soul.

Resting her head back on the wall she looked up at the plain ceiling, closing her eyes a moment. She needed…_something_. The weight was growing too heavy again. Most times she could handle it but sometimes it felt like she was being suffocated, pressed down, slowly crushed out of existence…and sometimes it was far too tempting to just let it _happen_.

Getting to her feet she moved out to her quarters and took a quick shower, changing into her yoga pants and a tank. The battered gold cross around her neck glimmered a little as she stepped out of the bathroom and padded down into the bedroom, a tiny but constant reminder of what was still at stake.

Picking up the guitar from its stand, she sat down on the bed and drew her legs up, crossing them as she rested the instrument on her lap. Strumming a little, she tweaked the tuning, before she set into an actual song.

Closing her eyes, she let the music flow, felt it sweep down into that dark place that so few could reach, felt it ease the pain a little. After a short time, she could almost imagine Liara sitting on the edge of the bed as well, listening to her. The image grew strong enough as she played that she fancied she could smell the soft perfume of her soap, could feel the slight slope of the mattress as it was indented by her weight, sense her presence like a warm light only inches away.

"Li," she murmured, and opened her eyes again as the song ended. Cold absence returned with an ache as she looked at her empty room. Wearily, she sighed.

_You're so fucking __**stupid**__, Shepard._

Her door chimed a breath later, and her eyes lifted to it as she groaned. "Never fucking _ends_, does it?"

Setting her guitar aside she called "Come in!"

Tali hurried in, wringing her hands frantically. Even without her clear haste and tense body-language, Shepard could feel the energy all but wafting off the quarian girl.

She was scared.

Surging up to her feet, brows knit, Shepard strode over to her. "Mei Mei? What's wrong?"

"Shepard, it's…I can't…"

She sounded on the verge of tears. Taking hold of her shoulders Shepard ducked her head a little, trying to meet the girl's eyes through her face mask. "It's all right, Tali. Just tell me what's wrong."

"I'm being tried for _treason_!" Tali blurted, and Shepard straightened in shock.

"You're…_what_? Treason? _You_? What for?"

"I-I don't know," her friend stammered. "I just got a message from the Admirals. I'm to return to the Flotilla immediately to stand trial. There was no mention of the actual charges but…_treason_? I think I would remember committing _treason_!"

"Sit down," Shepard ordered, steering the girl over to the bed. As Tali sat Shepard perched next to her, grasping her hands. "Is it because you're on the _Normandy_? Working with Cerberus-"

"I'm not working with _Cerberus_, I'm working with _you_!" Tali insisted. "And I got permission to do so. I didn't hide anything!"

"We'll get this figured out, Mei Mei…I _promise_," Shepard told her. "What does this charge…? I mean, what could _happen_?"

She was thinking of the Alliance response to a guilty-verdict of treason…a firing squad. Her gut steeled frantically at the thought, her mind going dark.

_I'll fucking tear apart the Flotilla myself if I have to, before I'll let them do that to Tali_.

"W-worse case scenario, if I am found guilty…I would be exiled."

"Exiled," Shepard let out a breath. It wasn't _death_ at least…though she could understand that for Tali, so intrinsically tied to her people, it would seem just as bad. "Ok. _Ok_, we're not letting that happen. They won't give you any more information?"

"No! I _tried_ to contact my father, but I got no answer. The same for my Aunt Raan. They're both on the Admiralty Board, they would oversee this trial! No doubt they'd have to recuse themselves from judgment but…Keelah, I can't imagine _what_ they are thinking right now…what _Father_ is thinking…"

Shepard could feel that Tali was shaking, and gripped her hands harder. Tali sucked in a trembling breath, the verge of a sob.

"Shepard, what am I going to _do_?"

Shepard ducked her head again to meet her eyes. "_We_ are going to take you home to the Flotilla," she said. "Then _we_ are going to find out what the fuck is wrong with them, and clear your name…even if _we_ have to break every goddamn neck in the place."

Tali sniffled. "Sh-Shepard, this isn't battle," she said shakily. "You cannot just hit this and make it go away-"

Shepard managed a smile, wrapping an arm around Tali's shoulders and hugging her. "You'd be surprised what I can do, Tali. I _mean_ it. We're going to _fix this_. Ok? I'm _not _going to leave you to face this alone."

"Y-your mission is too important," Tali said wearily. "I was going to find other transport, I didn't think that you'd-"

"Oh, I _am_ sticking up for my Mei Mei," Shepard told her. "David's safe at Grissom now, and we have some time until the ship upgrades are complete. We're just putting out feelers, looking for more intel, waiting for our next move. We can get you to the Flotilla, no problem, and I'll be fucked if I let you face this bullshit alone."

"Thank you, Shepard…" Tali murmured. "I…just…._thank you_."

"Any time."

After a moment and a few more sniffles, Tali sat up and looked at her. "I…meant to ask you. What does _Mei Mei_ mean?"

"Little sister," Shepard told her. "That's what you are to me, Tali. You're not just crew. You're _family_…my little sister."

"I…never really had a sister before," Tali told her. "How do you say 'big sister', then?"

"Jie Jie."

"Jie Jie…I like that," she sniffled. "I know you'll do everything to help me…I'm just…I'm so _scared_, Shepard. Confused…I keep wracking my brain trying to figure out what I could _possibly_ have done and…"

"We'll figure it out," Shepard promised. "Give me the coords for the Migrant Fleet and I'll have Joker put the pedal down. Hopefully your father and your aunt will reply back with some answers before we get there but if not…we'll cross that bridge when it's come to. Ok?"

"Ok, Shepard," Tali sniffed, then hugged her again. "Ok…_Jie Jie_."

* * *

><p><em>The sun was bright and warm. Liara walked through the green grasses, smiling at the faint puffs of erahs blooms as they broke free from the trees to lazily spin in the air.<em>

"_Is it too much further?" Shepard asked, her hand entwined in the asari's as she allowed herself to be led. Liara smiled back at her._

"_Just a little more," she promised. The grass started to thin, the ground sloping upward. One of the larger erahs trees topped the crest of the hillside, its branches spread wide, leaves rustling slightly in the wind. Liara drew to a halt beside its trunk, drawing Shepard up beside her and pointing out over the valley._

"_There," she said. "That is my home."_

_Shepard looked over the valley at the complex nestled among the hills. The sunlight cast the architectural sweeps into sharp relief, highlighting their edge and making the entire place seem to shine. _

"_It's beautiful," Shepard murmured, stepping behind Liara as her arms wound around her waist. The smell of cigars and soap joined that of the blossoms floating all around them as Shepard looked over her shoulder. _

"_I used to play in these hills, among these trees," Liara replied, drawing the human woman's arms tighter around her waist, sinking back into her warmth, her scent. Turning her head, her nose lightly drifted over Shepard's cheek. "I want our daughters to play here as well. I want to spend my life with you…"_

_Just before they kissed, the sunlight suddenly vanished in a wash of chill dark. Gasping, Liara looked out over the now midnight valley to see the complex burning, flames lifting a thousand feet into the air. _

"_Shepard!" she cried out in horror, the human woman beside her throwing a protective arm in front of her as a leviathan descended from the sky._

_The huge Reaper settled over the complex, the light in its eyes as bright as the sun. Liara tried to grasp hold of Shepard but the human woman shoved her back toward the tree. Her feet tangled on the roots and she fell into a sit._

"_Shepard!"_

"_Run, Liara!" Shepard cried out. "__**Run**__!"_

_Red fire swept over the hillside, a lancing blade of flame the color of blood. As it swept over the rise it consumed Shepard. _

_Her skin grayed and blackened to ash as she was engulfed, yet somehow Liara could still see her face…a face torn in agony, her brown eyes wide and suddenly glowing a deep and threatening red even as flesh fell away from her skull._

"Del!" Liara gasped, panting as she all but tore herself awake. The dream broke apart, leaving only her dim room, her tangled blankets, around her.

Pushing herself into a sit, Liara could feel the sweat between her shoulder-blades, her body trembling. Leaning forward she covered her face, fighting the tears.

_Is this a sign, Goddess? Is this simply a dream of fear or is it a message, a warning? Will we never have our happiness? Will I lose her again?_

For a moment, inexplicable anger filled her, choking her breath. How? _How_ was this fair? If there was some power watching over them, guiding their lives, then how could it be so cruel? If it was Shepard's fate to die, to be torn away, then why had Liara been made to love her? Why this pain? Why tease with the hope of happiness only to tear it away again like a bully mocking a weaker child on a playground?

Wiping her face, she cast aside the blankets and turned, sitting on the edge of the bed as she took an OSD from off her bedside stand. She accessed it, and a picture was projected upon the wall.

It was the first one she had taken, in those final moments on the original _Normandy_. Shepard sitting upon her bed, guitar on her lap. She was just looking up, her dark hair falling into her face. A moment later and she would be scowling, but in this moment, the peace and happiness her music brought her was still there. It made her look young, happy. It was the _real_ Del, beneath all the anger, the gruff, the armor. The Del Shepard Liara had fallen in love with.

She wished, not for the first time, that her mother was still alive. They had been close once, when Liara was young. Benezia had been gentle then, beautiful…understanding. Liara wanted to talk to that Benezia now. _Ask_ her.

_Is this how it always is? This love…this torture? How do I endure it?_

Liara had been taught more than once that the force between two bondmates was strong but she had not expected anything like this. Love, yes. Attachment, affection, happiness, certainly.

Other asari had lost their bondmates. It was common when such a long lived species chose their partners with so many races that had much shorter lives. She had seen the grief, the pain these asari went through, but she had _also_ seen the recovery…the healing of the wound, the joy in the memory, and the eventual discovery of love with another once again. With beings as long lived as they, acceptance of loss and grief and eventual peace were paramount to their survival.

Liara, however, could not fathom _how_ she would survive it if she were to truly lose Shepard. When she had thought her dead the first time, it had been a pain beyond anything she had expected. It had stolen her breath, her will. Even now, Liara felt that the hope given her by Cerberus was the only thing that had kept her together, perhaps even kept her alive.

Liara was certain she would _not_ survive it again. Perhaps if they _had_ that life together, daughters…if Shepard were to live to the longest years of her kind and went in peace and the love of family…perhaps then Liara would have at least a _chance _of enduring it. Like this, however, to lose her now…there _was_ no hope. If Shepard…if this fight claimed her, then there was no more hope. There would be nothing left for Liara to live for.

_Is this how it always is, Mother? If so, am I just…weak? How does __**anyone**__ survive it?_

* * *

><p>It felt strange to be in full hard-suit and helmet aboard an allied ship…almost as strange as standing five times as long in the decom chamber, arms held out as she was bathed in radiation designed to eliminate any microbial presence that may prove in the least harmful.<p>

Shepard had never before seen the Migrant Fleet. Few outside the quarians themselves ever did, and that Tali trusted her with the location while the ship under her command was technically Cerberus said a great deal.

As decom finished and the chamber door opened, Shepard lowered her arms and followed Tali out into the corridor, where over a dozen quarians stood silently waiting.

One rather large male broke off from the group, striding forward. Shepard wondered for a moment if this was Tali's father but their exchange quickly banished that impression.

"Welcome back, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. It is good to have you home."

"Thank you, Captain," she said tremulously, then gestured at Shepard. "This is my commanding officer, Delilah Shepard."

She cast Tali a dry, narrow look at the use of her first name, the corners of her lips tightening some. Had Tali been nearly anyone else, she'd have gotten a flaming earful for it.

"Captain Shepard vas Normandy, it is my honor," the quarian male inclined his head in greeting. "You are well-known among the Fleet for what you did at the Citadel. Tali has told us much about you."

"Thank you, Captain, but I'm a Commander," she told him.

"You are responsible for the decisions of your ship and the lives of your crew. That makes you a Captain among our people."

"It's…kind of an honor, Shepard," Tali murmured. "Especially given that you're not quarian."

"I see. Thank you, then."

Looking at Tali, the older quarian told her, not ungently, "The Admirals have been notified of your arrival. It will take them some time to prepare themselves and arrive on the _Rayya_. In the mean time…I'm _technically_ supposed to put you under arrest but I think restricting you to the ship would be sufficient."

Shepard could see Tali's faint shudder at the word _arrest_, and the girl nodded. "Th-thank you Captain. I…wait, Captain…you called me vas Normandy-"

"In light of the situation the Admirals decided…it was best."

"Best to take away her _name_?" Shepard asked with a frown. "She is my crew for now but her heart is here. They'd take that away?"

"I don't agree with it either, Captain," he replied. "However it is what the Admirals have decided. I'm sorry, Tali."

"I understand," Tali said weakly.

As the Captain and his men departed, Tali seemed to sag a little. Shepard put her hand on her shoulder. "Keep strong, kiddo. Just remember no matter what happens, you _have_ a home, ok?"

"Thank you, Shepard," Tali told her. "I am honored to carry the Normandy name, it's just-"

"I know, Mei Mei. I know."

* * *

><p>The <em>Rayya<em> was big, and a fine ship, but more than one thing about it grated on Shepard's nerves. For one thing, it was loud. Always, there was the sound of rushing air, grinding machinery, rumbling engines…a dozen different noises from a dozen different sources. She remembered Tali mentioning when she'd first come aboard the original _Normandy_ how she'd had difficulty adjusting to the silence. Now Shepard understood it.

Secondly, it was crowded. Every hall, every corridor had at least a dozen people in it at any given time, and while she couldn't be certain…she was pretty positive she didn't see the same individual twice. Some stared as they went past…no doubt curious about the human or having heard about Tali.

"I…want you to meet someone," Tali told Shepard as they headed through yet another hallway. Del was already completely lost but Tali had been born here, grew up here. She knew the corridors like the back of her hand.

"Oh?"

"Yes… she enjoyed the stories I told her about you, with the battle at the Citadel and all. She…well, she is a lot _like_ you, I think."

"A bitch?" Shepard grunted with a smirk. Tali snorted, but there was at least some amusement in the sound, which was good to hear.

"At times, _yes_," she teased. Reaching a door, she pressed the call. A moment later it slid open.

Shepard looked downward in surprise. A quarian child, perhaps the height of an eight or a nine year old human, peered up at her through a rounded mask. The child's suit was simple, less ornate than those of the grown quarians. The mask, however, was almost completely clear and unobstructive, and for the first time in her experience with their race, Shepard could clearly see the face behind it.

The child's eyes were luminescent, inscrutable. Lengths of blue-black hair fell over a smooth forehead. The nose and jaw were slightly longer, and the skin bore dark and slightly raised markings along the forehead and throat, but beyond that she may have been looking at any human child she had ever seen.

"What are _you_?" the child asked bluntly. Though it was difficult to tell by face alone, it was clear when he spoke that the child was male. Shepard blinked in bemused surprise.

"Rekka, don't be rude," Tali admonished. "This is Captain Shepard. She's a human."

"Oh."

"Rekka, is Deefa here?" Tali asked. The expression that suddenly passed over the boy's face was troubling. His face tightened, his lower lip trembling a moment.

"Deefa-"

"Rekka, who is it?" A voice called, a breath before a grown quarian woman suddenly appeared in the doorway. Her suit was just as inscrutable as Tali's, but the ice in her eyes was obvious.

"Nari, I-" Tali began, only to jump as the other woman pulled the young boy away from the door and hit the control. The door whisked shut, right in their faces.

"What the hell?" Shepard scowled.

"Sh-Shepard," Tali gasped, suddenly gripping Del's arm. "Shepard…I think something horrible has happened to Deefa…"

"Tali, who is Deefa? What does she do?"

"D-Deefa'Raan vas Rayya is…she's a marine, which is why I thought you would like her. Before I met you she was the strongest person I knew. I…well, I suppose she is not _really_ my cousin since Aunt Raan is not really my aunt…Shala'Raan and my father have been friends almost since they were children. Deefa is Shala'Raan's oldest daughter. That was her grandmother and her youngest brother. I…Rekka's face and…Nari would _never_ close the door on me, I…w-what's _happening_, Shepard?"

"I don't know," Shepard said. She was half tempted to bang on the door and demand answers from that rude bitch but she knew that would only hurt matters more than help them.

"What if it is because of this treason charge? What if…what if whatever happened to Deefa is my fault? Oh, _Keelah_…"

"Tali, stop…" Shepard took her shoulders, peering at her. "Don't tear yourself up like this. The Captain said it wouldn't be long until the Admirals got here. We'll shake the truth out of them if we have to, but you need to hold together until then, ok?"

"O-ok, Shepard, I…ok…"

Shepard prayed that Tali was wrong. She knew in her heart that Tali would never do anything to betray or endanger the Flotilla…the girl would sooner cut her own throat. However it was clear that these people blamed her for _something_, and if her friend had indeed suffered the consequences of whatever this…something…was, she knew that Tali would _never _forgive herself.

* * *

><p>"Auntie Raan!"<p>

Shala'Raan turned at the cry, feeling her throat close a little. It was not hard to spot Tali, hurrying toward her with her human captain on her heels. Struggling down on her emotion she opened her arms and embraced the girl tightly.

"Aunt Raan, what's happened?" Tali all but sobbed. "_Treason_? Wh-what's going on? Where's father? What's happened to Deefa-?"

"Tali, I…" she forced herself to loosen her grip, to hold on to her professionalism. "Tali, most of those things will be answered shortly."

"But…"

"This is your new Captain?" she asked, and offered her hand toward the human. "Shepard, Tali has told us many stories about you. Keelah se'lai."

"My honor," Shepard greeted. Though her words were polite Shala could feel the iron tension in her hand. There was no question she was shaking hands with a warrior…and an _angry_ one. "With respect, Admiral, Tali has been left in the dark about everything that's going on. She deserves some answers."

"She will have them," Shala promised. "There is…little I am free to tell you at the moment, Tali. I have recused myself from this trial but I will be moderating. You are accused of sending active Geth to the Fleet."

"_What_?" Tali's horrified gasp was genuine enough. Even if Shepard had ever had any cause to doubt her, that emotion would have banished it immediately. "What are you-…_no_! No, I never sent active geth! That would be _insane_, I-"

"What, Tali?" Shepard pressed gently when the girl broke off.

"I just sent _parts_," she admitted. She was shaking again, fiddling with her fingers. "They were for research, just…parts, I _swear_ it! I was so careful, Shala! Nothing I sent could repair or reactivate on its own. I was _careful_!"

"I believe you, Tali," Shala said softly. "I do. I know you would not do this."

"Keelah," Tali moaned, her voice thick. Then she sniffed, lifting her head again. "Shala, please…Deefa-"

The quarian Admiral felt her own throat tighten again, and struggled to speak. "I…we are needed inside. I promised I would not keep you-"

"You can't even tell her about her friend?" Shepard asked hotly.

"I-…Tali, it…" her throat caught as well, and she steeled herself, taking a deep breath. "Captain, all _must_ be explained inside, and there is a favor I must ask of you. The Admirals are trying Tali today under the name 'vas Normandy'. As her captain in this regard, we ask that you speak on her behalf."

"If it helps Tali, you're damn right I will," Shepard replied.

"Good, then…we must get inside. This…it will all be over soon, sweet one. I…come. This way."

* * *

><p>As Tali and Shepard followed the older woman, Shepard reached out and rested her hand on the young quarian's shoulder. As always, her anger was making her bold…hopefully, not <em>too<em> bold. As Tali had pointed out, this wasn't a problem to just punch. Brute force wouldn't be winning this, and Shepard had _never_ been a good speaker, a good politician.

_Tali's fate may end up resting on my words. Fuck, but I think we're both in some __**serious**__ trouble._

The older woman led them into a wide garden Plaza, an amphitheatre already lined with a few dozen quarians. If she remembered correctly, this would be the Conclave…representatives from each ship who formed a more day-to-day hierarchy of government. The Admiralty Board, who would be presiding over this mess, were in charge of defense and more serious criminal actions…such as treason.

As the three entered, the entire room went quiet. Two men and a woman stood in front of a promontory at the center floor of the theatre; the Admirals. Shala'Raan indicated to Shepard and Tali to halt a few feet in front of them, then took her place on the promontory itself.

Shepard was searching the face-plates of the two men, wondering which was Tali's father, when the girl leaned over and whispered, "Father isn't here."

"If I may call this meeting into order," Shala spoke from her position, the silence simply thickening with weight. "We are here because one of our Fleet, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, has been accused of treason. She stands now with her captain, Delilah'Shepard vas Normandy."

"I object," the male on the right snorted. "A _human_…she has no place here. This is a _quarian_ matter!"

"You should have thought of _that_ before you stripped her ship name and declared her crew of the _Normandy_," the male in the center pointed out.

"By law regardless of race, her captain has the right to stand with her," Shala intoned. The first male huffed, and then nodded.

"I withdraw my objection."

"Does Tali's captain have anything to say?" Shala asked.

_Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck __**fuckity**__ fuck fuck_.

Shepard cleared her throat, thinking frantically. After a moment she lifted her head. "Tali serves on my crew but she _is_ Tali'Zorah vas Neema, and she will _always_ be a part of this Fleet, before _anything else_. I was honored to meet her on her Pilgrimage, and I have been honored every day since for knowing her. You will not find a more dedicated, harder working, and more loyal member to this Fleet, I promise you that."

"Thank you. Tali, you are accused of sending active geth to the Fleet. How do you respond?" Shala asked.

"I _never_ sent active units!" Tali protested. "I sent parts and pieces, but I was very careful to insure they could not self-repair or reactivate. Nothing I sent was dangerous!"

"Then how do you explain geth seizing your father's lab ship?" the terser of the two males demanded.

Shepard heard Tali's inhale, the faint whimper she uttered before she stammered, "W-what? What happened?"

The female admiral spoke now, lifting her voice for the first time. "Tali'Zorah, geth seized the lab ship _Alarei _two days ago. As near as we can tell, the entire crew, including Admiral Rael'Zorah, have been killed."

Tali wavered and for a moment Shepard feared the girl would actually faint. She grabbed her arm to steady her, watching her struggle not to crumple.

"Keelah," she moaned thickly. "Oh, Keelah…_father_…"

"Admirals, are you saying one of your ships is _right now_ under geth control?" Shepard demanded, still holding Tali's arm.

"The _Alarei_ is under guard and isolated at the edge of the Fleet," Shala told her. "We have managed to block all communication from the vessel but yes…the _Alarei _is in the control of the geth."

"And you're holding this trial _now_? With all due respect, our first priority needs to be the safety of this Fleet!"

Tali heaved in a breath, steadying a little. "You _have_ to retake it," she said urgently. "A heavy strike force, an infiltration team…we need to take the ship back from the geth before they find a way to communicate with the outside or infiltrate other ships! You have to send in the mari-"

Tali's breath suddenly caught mid-word as if she'd been hit in the gut. Realization dawned upon her at the same moment it dawned upon Shepard. Shepard slung an arm around her waist as Tali gripped her shoulder, a muffled sob escaping.

Raan's voice was heavy with emotion but remarkably steady as she spoke to the silence. "Marines _were _sent to the _Alarei_. Twenty good men and women under the command of Deefa'Raan vas Rayya."

"_Keelah_, no…" Tali moaned faintly as Raan straightened a little, her voice all but inaudible as she concluded.

"There were no survivors."


	52. Chapter 52

A/N: This chapter has been edited.

After it being pointed out and a bit of consideration on my part, I decided I was slightly too over the top with the portrayal of Han'Gerrel. Honestly, I blame his actions in ME3 (don't worry, for those who have not played it, no spoilers...we'll just say he pissed me off to no end).

In the spirit of being fair and truer to the character, I have altered some of his dialogue. I also fixed some minor typos and a reference to Tali's hair...which Shepard, of course, has never seen.

Enjoy!

* * *

><p>Shepard could recall only two or three times in her life where she had been just as furious as she was now. Given the fact that Shepard started off a <em>good<em> day anywhere from mildly irritated to exceedingly pissed off, that was saying something.

She wanted to let fire loose on the Admiralty Board, tell them exactly how reprehensible she thought they were, how stupid, blind and outright cruel. Not telling Tali that her father was dead? Her friend? Dragging her in for a trial without even word one of the charges, just to hit her with all this?

She knew, however, that to do so would do Tali no favors…nor the rest of the quarian people. It was not _their_ fault their Admirals were a bunch of assholes.

Still her voice was stone, edged with fire as she spoke as evenly as she could, her arm still slung around Tali. "Admirals, I request permission to put this trial on hold and secure the _Alarei."_

"Y-yes," Tali echoed immediately, straightening. Her voice was thick, quavering, but determined. "Yes, please…you have to let us retake the ship! Find…find out what _really_ happened!"

"Twenty of our best marines could not retake the ship," the terse male snorted. "What makes you think that _you_ can?"

"Admirals, you _know_ what I can do," Shepard retorted. "I fought the geth on Eden Prime. I fought the geth on Feros and Noveria, with _Tali_. I fought them on the Citadel, on Haestrom. No one knows more about how geth work than Tali does, and no one knows more about how to tear them apart then _I _do. Let us _try_. We can clear the ship, restore it to quarian control, and with luck…we'll find out how the geth really got on board because I don't believe _for one goddamn minute_ Tali had _anything_ to do with it."

"Hmm. Well, I suppose if you're looking for an honorable death-"

"I'm looking for my father, _you bosh'tet_!" Tali snarled with surprising venom, fury and grief shaking her small frame. "I'm looking for my _friend_!"

Shepard gripped her shoulder. "Admirals, please. The safety of this Fleet must be priority."

The three exchanged looks, then glanced up at Shala'Raan, who nodded. "Very well, Captain Shepard. You and Tali will be allowed to attempt to retake the _Alarei_, and find evidence of what occurred there. This trial will resume upon your return…or upon determination that you have been killed in action."

"I will notify my ship immediately," Shepard stated. "My team can be ready in-"

"Unfortunately, that won't be possible," the other female Admiral spoke again. She was much quieter than her male companions, her voice exotic enough, but sharp and hard. "You are here out of courtesy as Tali's captain, and we will allow you to board the _Alarei_ with her under that same courtesy, however that does not extend to the rest of your crew. We will not compromise this Fleet more than it already has been."

"_Quarian troops_ then! Surely you can give me-"

"You don't seem to understand this, Captain, so I shall make it plain. We do not expect that you or Tali'Zorah will survive. We have lost twenty trained marines and the entire crew of the ship…we cannot afford to lose any more. Tali has chosen her fate, and her choice is to die with honor rectifying her mistake-"

"You have not yet _proven_ it is _her mistake_!" Shepard accused furiously. "This…this is an _execution_? Without proof, without _solid_ proof you're expecting her to throw her life away on speculation and _circumstance_?"

"She has made her choice," the terse male replied. "Tali, if you wish we can simply destroy the _Alarei _and resume this trial."

"No!" Tali gasped, then gripped Shepard's arm. "Shepard, please…we have to _try_."

She heard the human woman actually growl under her breath, and could feel the tension in her muscles even through her hard-suit. For a moment, the young quarian had a vision of Shepard actually hauling out her rifle and opening fire on the Admiralty Board. It made her shudder.

"_Please, Shepard_!"

"Admirals, I would like permission to accompany Ms. Zorah and Captain Shepard."

Shepard turned her head at the oddly familiar voice, as a young male quarian stepped out of the seats and walked toward them.

"Kal?" Tali blinked.

"Kal'Reegar, this is _not_ your affair," the first male responded.

"Reegar is within his rights to make such a request," Shala intoned. "Crew can stand with accused in such a matter."

"Reegar is _not_ Tali's crew!" he huffed.

"Kal'Reegar stood with us on Haestrom," Shepard said quickly, turning her eyes back to the Admirals. "He was under Tali's command on that project, and I would be honored to consider him temporarily under _my_ command."

"Kal'Reegar, will you accept Captain Shepard's command?" Shala asked before any more protests could be made.

"I would, Admiral," Reegar replied. "I would be honored."

"Then it is done. You three will depart on a shuttle for the Alarei and attempt to retake the ship. This hearing is recessed until the success or failure of that mission. Keelah se'lai."

As a low rumble of voices filled the room, Shepard turned her head toward Tali. The poor girl looked smaller than before, wilted somehow. She was still shaking as she looked at Reegar.

"Th-thank you, Kal," she said. "I…y-you didn't have to do that."

"I did, ma'am," Reegar replied. "Not sure how much help one more gun is going to be but…I don't believe for a second this is your doing, and if I can help prove that then…that's what I'm going to do. Besides, I saw your captain in action, heard your stories. Hell, give her a spanner and a tazer and let her loose, I'd almost believe she could retake the ship on her own."

Shepard might have laughed at any other time. Right now, she was too tense, too angry, to even smirk at the man's attempt at levity.

"Me too," Tali agreed weakly.

Reegar inclined his head, cleared his throat. "I'll go and make sure the shuttle is ready. We'll depart soon."

As he walked away, Shepard took Tali's arms. "You ok?"

"How could I be anything even _close_ to ok?" Tali asked, her voice breaking. "This is a nightmare, Shepard…I keep waiting to wake up! Father…Deefa…what if this _is_ my doing? What if I made some kind of mistake? How can I _live_ with that, Shepard? How can I live knowing that I put the Fleet in danger, that _I'm_ the reason my father and best friend are-"

"Hey, enough of _that_…" Shepard said kindly. "You didn't do _anything_ wrong, Tali. I _know_ it. I know you too well to believe this of you. You know more about the geth than anyone. If you say those parts you sent were safe then they _were_ safe. Something _else_ happened, and we're going to find out what. We-"

She broke off as she caught an approaching form from the corner of her eye. Stiffening when she realized it was Shala'Raan, Shepard was on the verge of a tongue-lashing the likes of which she had never before produced…when Tali beat her to the punch.

"Raan! How _could you_!" the young quarian fumed, her voice trembling and breaking with both sorrow and fury. "How could you _not tell me_! Father, and _Deefa_? Your own _daughter,_ Raan! You couldn't _tell_ _me_?"

"Tali," the older woman's voice was surprisingly gentle, filled with emotion she was keeping under tight control. "It was the only chance I could give you. The Admirals, the Conclave…they had to see it, had to _hear_ your grief and disbelief. Without it they may not have let you and your Captain attempt to take the _Alarei_."

"So you manipulated her to manipulate _them_," Shepard said icily. "For…what? A foolish charge into a geth-controlled ship? A ship where a whole crew and squadron were _already _slaughtered? You wanted to give her a chance to take the quarian equivalent of _execution_?"

"_No_!" Shala'Raan said insistently, her voice rough. "Captain, Tali…_please_, listen. I _know_ that Tali did not do this. I know her as well as you do, Captain. She would never do _anything _to hurt the Fleet. There is evidence of her innocence aboard that ship, I know there is. Deefa…knew it too. That is why she _insisted_ her squadron be the one to go in. She refused to believe that you could have a hand in this, Tali, and she was determined to prove it before the Admirals could truly levy a charge of treason."

Tali lowered her head, a faint choke emerging from her throat. Shala's voice sounded thicker as well, as she continued. "I have listened to your stories as she did, Tali...and not _just_ those. I found stories of Captain Shepard on my own, as well."

Her face-plate turned to Shepard. "I knew that if Tali had you at her side when she went aboard the _Alarei,_ not only was that the best chance that it could be taken back, but that you would stop at _nothing_ to find the evidence, and to keep Tali safe…even if it cost your own life."

Shepard stayed silent. It was true, of course, but her fury over this whole farce was unabated. Reaching out, Shala'Raan gently lay a hand on Tali's shoulder. "You are as good as a daughter to me, Tali. Your mother was as good as a sister. I have…I have lost one daughter already. Please…I have no wish to lose a second. Not to death or exile…or _hatred_."

* * *

><p>The three sat in the back of the shuttle as it departed the <em>Rayya<em>. Tali sat with her elbows on her knees, leaning forward and cradling her face-plate in her hands. Shepard sat next to her, one hand resting on her back.

"C-can we do this, Shepard?" Tali asked in a small voice after a moment.

"Of course we can," Shepard told her. "Fuck, Tali…we've been in tighter places than this."

"I…I'm trying to _hope_, Jie Jie," Tali whispered. "Hope that…that my father is still alive…that Deefa made it through somehow…that _we_ will make it through…"

"We _will_," Shepard insisted.

"Believe it or not, ma'am, you do have most of the Admiralty Board on your side," Kal'Reegar offered. Shepard looked over at him.

"Didn't seem that way."

"Well, Shala'Raan had to recuse herself but even so…her opinion holds weight. Zaal'Koris thinks this was all just a huge mistake-"

"He does?" Tali asked in surprise, lifting her head to look at Kal. "Zaal'Koris _hates_ Father."

"I don't know if 'hate' is the word I'd choose," Reegar shrugged. "They don't see eye to eye, that's true, but he respects your father, and you too."

"How don't they see eye to eye?" Shepard asked.

"Zaal'Koris thinks it is wrong for us to prepare against the geth, to do weapons tests and countermeasure tests on their technology," Tali supplied. "He thinks we should find a colony world and settle down instead of trying to take back Rannoch."

"And…your father disagrees?"

"So do _I_," Tali replied. "Even if we were lucky enough to find a colony world that's even remotely compatible to our physiology, it would take hundreds of years before we would adapt. If we took back Rannoch, we could adapt back in decades. Unfortunately, war with the geth is the only way that is ever going to happen."

"A war Han'Gerrel is all for," Kal'Reegar stated, folding his arms.

"That was the one with the attitude, wasn't it?" Shepard asked narrowly.

"Yes ma'am."

"And the woman…? She didn't say much. What's _her _take?"

"Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh," Tali mumbled, as if speaking the name too loudly would cause the woman herself to appear. "She thinks we should take the geth back."

"Take them _back?_" Shepard gaped. "You mean, re-enslave them?"

"Yes," Reegar stated. "_Fortunately_, she thinks this trial is a waste of time. So do a lot of quarians. Truth be told, ma'am…this trial is a joke."

"Doesn't feel like a joke," Tali said hotly.

"I know," he replied sympathetically. "However it's not about you…never was. Keelah, they have no evidence you did anything at _all_, Tali. Someone heard a _rumor _that you were sending geth parts to your Father…that is _all_ they are running on."

"That's it?" Shepard glared. "Someone heard a _rumor _and now Tali's on trial?"

"If the situation weren't this big this would never have come this far," Reegar agreed. "Truth be told this trial is really about the Admirals. Should we go to war, should we not, should we take back our home, should we take back the geth…they're using this to forward their own agendas, you mark my words. They'll use Tali and whatever outcome to this farce as a stomping ground to rally the Fleet into battle…or away from it. It's all crap."

Shepard had always hated politicians. Now that hatred only grew. They would ruin Tali's life, send her into what they were _sure_ was certain death, all to forward their own agendas?

_Fuck that bullshit. I'll clear her name, clear that goddamn ship, and shove the evidence down their __**fucking**__ throats. _

* * *

><p>Thick smears of purple made a weaving line over the gray floor, tracing here and there across the wide, quiet bridge. In the soft orange glow of the emergency lighting, the trail looked almost black.<p>

Near the center of the room, the smears were wider, mingling with splashes of white that still leaked slowly from the ruined geth sprawled only a few feet away. A rifle with a jammed thermal clip was dropped at its side. Next to it, a quarian's helmet had been discarded.

In the distance, she heard the rattle of gunfire again. Her eyelids moved open slightly, her luminescent gaze faint pearls in the darkness.

More gunfire, closer. Distant voices floated through the dark like ghosts, ever so faint. For a moment her bare three-fingered hand rested on the pistol sitting beside her, before it clasped instead to the OSD laying on her leg.

Another pair of shots, then voices. The door to the bridge hissed open. Almost immediately, there was a cry.

"_Father!"_

Around the central console, if she leaned her head just so, she could see the three shadows across the room. Two were unmistakably quarian. The third…human? Surely, it could not be _human_…?

Her eyelids fluttered again and sagged, the voices floating to her like a dream.

"Father, no! _No_…no, _please_…Keelah, you…you always had a plan! An…onboard stasis program maybe-"

"Tali…"

"_No!_ He wouldn't leave me like this! He _wouldn't-"_

"Mei Mei…"

A choked sob. Long lashes fluttered again as she forced her eyes open. One of the shadows was crumpled on her knees next to the still, fallen form of Rael'Zorah. A second was crouching beside her, arms slung around the sobbing figure, comforting.

_Tali. It's Tali…_

The realization filtered slowly through her mind, like a fish trying to struggle through cold mud. Her other hand shifted against her chest, fingers dark with tendrils of blood.

"_Tali_…"she whispered, her voice almost inaudible, even to her.

"Shepard, I…oh _Keelah_," Tali moaned, a sob catching in her throat.

_It __**is**__ a human. It's her captain, Shepard…_

Warmth moved through her throat a moment and weakly she moved her lips, swallowing back the taste of blood.

"_Tali…_" she whispered again, but her voice was no louder than it had been before.

"M-maybe he left a message," Tali sniffled at last, her sobs lessening a little. "He…he had to know someone would come, maybe…"

There was a faint flare of orange as Tali activated her father's omni-tool. Rael'Zorah's voice filled the air.

"_Tali, if you are hearing this, then I did not make it. I tried so hard, Tali…made so many foolish mistakes. I am sorry that this will leave you only pain. I…am sorry I was not a better father to you. I…I managed to save evidence of what we were doing here on the main bridge terminal. The Fleet will see that you are innocent of this. It…it is the only gift I have left. I love you, Tali…"_

The voice ended, the orange glow fading away. At the soft renewal of weeping, the eyelashes once more tried to lift, faint eyes tried to focus.

"He left proof, Tali," the human, Shepard, said quietly. "The geth are dead. The ship is taken back, and you can clear your name. It's…not what you wanted, not ideal but…he did the best he could."

Tali took in a shaky breath, then got to her feet. "Y-yes, he…he did," she sniffled, seemed to steel herself. Crossing the room on the other side of the console bank, Tali and her captain vanished from direct sight. The other quarian was lingering near Rael's body, regarding it silently.

"If I can just access…" Tali began, then seemed to gasp in a horrified breath.

"What's wrong?" Shepard asked.

"The…the console has been _wiped_! Everything but the very basic data interface has been cleared…Shepard, there's nothing _here_!"

Panic was clear in the other girl's voice. Struggling for air, gritting her teeth, the dying quarian made one last effort.

"_Tali…"_

* * *

><p>"…Shepard, there's nothing <em>here!<em>"

Taking Tali's shoulder, Shepard half-leaned over, looking at the display herself. The quarian was right…everything had been wiped, leaving only the basic operating system intact.

_Who would wipe it? The geth? Why would they care…?_

A soft sound instantly drew her attention and within the same heartbeat, she had her pistol in hand, pulling Tali back a pace. "Did you hear that?"

"Wh-what?" Tali whispered, even as Kal'Reegar turned his head.

"Keelah!" he gasped, spotting something on the other side of the console. "_Tali!_"

Even as he rushed forward, shipping his weapon, Tali and Shepard stepped around the console.

Slumped in the corner was a quarian woman. One hand was resting on her lap, holding something. The other was plastered to her chest. The front of her suit was soaked dark with blood, more still leaking through her pale fingers.

Pale, because they were _bare_…as was her head and face. She had removed her gloves and helmet.

Her hair color was impossible to tell in the dim light. Lighter than Rekka's but indistinguishable in hue. Her luminescent eyes were half-closed, pale and faded, not nearly as bright as Rekka's had been.

"_Deefa_!" Tali gasped in horror, rushing to the girl's side. Her left hand plastered over the wound. "Wh-why did you take off your _helmet_? Shepard, we need medi-gel!"

Shepard was already fishing a pack out of her belt, moving over to the girl's other side. As she started to crack it open, however, Deefa lifted her closed hand off her lap and weakly waved Shepard's hand away. "No…" she said softly. "Too late for that…I'm afraid."

"No, Deefa," Tali sobbed, grasping the other girl's cheek with her right hand. "Deefa, we can still help you, we can-"

"Shh, listen to me," the girl murmured. As if they weighed a thousand pounds each Deefa lifted her hands and grasped Tali's, pressing an OSD into her palm. "I saved it…wiped it from the system. No one will know…"

"Kn-know what?"

"Proof…your father…I'm sorry, Tali…"

"Deefa, I don't understand…_please_, let us help you! We can get you back to the Flotilla, get you treated…you'll be _fine_, Deefa…Rekka needs you, we _all_ need you…_please_…"

Tali's voice was rough with sobs, the extent of emotion she'd gone through more than taking its toll.

"Deefa, we can at least _try_," Shepard urged, more for Tali's sake than the young marine's. She could see the wound, see the amount of blood lost. Even if she were in a surgical lab right now with the best doctors in the galaxy, Shepard doubted she had a chance.

"Commander Shepard," the girl managed a faint smile as her eyes shifted to the human's. "Tali said…her stories…I…"

"Shh, just take it easy," Shepard murmured.

"I'm glad I got to meet you," Deefa whispered. "When Tali would speak of you I knew…I knew someday, that I wanted to be as you were. Strong…fearless…noble…"

"_Deefa_," Tali moaned softly.

"You _are_ strong, fearless, and noble," Shepard told the girl. "_I_ am the one that should be honored."

Deefa's faint smile grew only a slight amount, her weary face lighting up a heartbeat with joy. "I dreamed of the day that I could serve with you, Commander. I even hoped…silly…but…I hoped that I could be the first…first quarian Spectre…"

Shepard's jaw tightened, and she nodded. "I can imagine no one better for it than you."

Deefa's hand fumbled up, catching hold of Shepard's and squeezing it. Her other hand was still clasped in Tali's, the OSD pressed between their palms.

"Take care of Tali, Commander," Deefa whispered. Her eyes were barely open now, her breathing clearly labored. "She's…_hopeless_."

"Who are you calling 'hopeless', you thundering meat-head?" Tali gasped, sniffling. Deefa smiled again, but the expression faded almost before it had begun. Those half-lidded luminescent eyes fixed to a point beyond all mortal sight, and the wet, laborious breaths stilled. Tali choked back another sob, leaning forward until her head rested against her friend's.

"_After time adrift among open stars_," she murmured, her voice rough and trembling. "_Along tides of light and through shoals of dust, I will return to where I began._ You are one of our family, Deefa'Raan vas Rayya. You are loved."

Her voice broke a moment, before she managed to finish. "_Keelah se'lai_."

"Keelah se'lai," Reegar and Shepard both echoed softly, before Shepard gently reached up and closed the young marine's eyes.

* * *

><p>Shepard carefully lay the girl on the bench in the shuttle, respectfully folding her hands over her chest. She glanced over as Reegar entered with Rael'Zorah, giving him a nod. Now that the ship was secure again, a crew could come in and retrieve the other poor souls who had died on the <em>Alarei,<em> but these two were not being left behind.

As Reegar started to situate Rael, Shepard stepped back out of the shuttle. Tali was lingering just within the docking clamp, her omni-tool lit…watching the data taken from the OSD that Deefa had salvaged.

"Tali?" Shepard asked softly.

The girl was still shaking as she switched the feed off. She took a step backward, then wavered and fell back slightly, her shoulders catching on the wall. Alarmed, Shepard strode forward and caught hold of her.

"_Tali_?"

"I'm…all right," Tali murmured, sounding anything but. "We…we can't give this evidence to the Board, Shepard."

"Why not? Does it clear your name?"

"Yes…" Tali told her. "It is proof that my father is the one that directed the geth to be rebuilt, networking them. There is evidence that I only sent deactivated parts…they received other parts from elsewhere and took it…took it upon _themselves_ to rebuild the units. He…he was taking drastic risks, Shepard…all for…for _me_…to build me a home on Rannoch. To keep his promise."

"Tali, he made a _mistake_. He did it out of love but…he took a risk that didn't pan out," Shepard told her. "He had the best of intentions, and…I'm _so_ sorry, Mei Mei. I…"

She lowered her head. She felt so helpless. She should have done something more. If they had moved faster, maybe they would have gotten to Deefa in time to make a difference. Losing her father was hard enough. Seeing her friend like that on top of it, holding her while she died…

She cleared her throat. "Tali, if this evidence can clear you, then we _need_ to present it to the Board as quickly as we-"

"No," Tali insisted. "No, don't you see, Shepard? If I give this evidence to the Board my father will be judged to be a war criminal…no, the _worst_ war criminal in the history of our people! My father loved his people, Shepard. He made a _mistake_! He would be…his name would be…oh, _Keelah_, it would be horrible. He doesn't _deserve_ that, Shepard. He doesn't deserve having _everything_ he was destroyed over a stupid mistake!"

"Tali, _you_ don't deserve to be exiled over _his_ stupid mistake, either!"

"I would rather that, than ruin everything my father was! _Please_, Shepard. Deefa knew this. She saw the data. That is why she wiped the local copy, so no one _else _would see it. I…"

She broke down again, sagging forward. Shepard caught her, hugging her tightly. She could feel her own eyes heating as she pressed them closed. After a moment she nodded. "C'mon. We have to get back, Mei Mei, or they'll decide we're dead and this won't matter."

Tali allowed herself to be steered onto the shuttle. Reegar had found a pair of emergency thermal blankets in the shuttle's storage and had used them to cover Deefa and Rael. Tali fought not to look at the neatly wrapped shapes, keeping her eyes fixed to the window the entire flight back.

As soon as they docked, Reegar waved them on. "I'll stay here and make sure these two are taken care of," he urged. "You two need to get back in there."

* * *

><p>Shala'Raan stood at the entrance to the promontory, her hands gripping the railing so tightly she seemed to be trying to bend it by sheer force of strength.<p>

"I don't like it any more than you do, Shala, but we have to face facts. They're dead," Han'Gerrel said sternly. "Call it."

"No," she murmured. "No, you don't _know_ that. Commander Shepard is more skilled than any of our marines. We must give them a chance. It has only been a few hours-"

"And our marine platoon under the _skilled_ guidance of your own daughter only lasted five minutes," he shot back.

She released the railing, whirling on him. "How _dare_ you," she gasped, struggling against the pain wanting to close her throat. "My daughter gave her life bravely for this Fleet, she-"

"Brave or not, Shala, she's_ gone_," he replied. "The same for Commander Shepard and Tali'Zorah, and because of his decency, Kal'Reegar as well! Your daughter was skilled, I'll admit, but she was far too inexperienced to have been sent over to that ship! You_ knew_ that when you sent her!"

"Gerrel! That's enough!" Zaal'Koris admonished hotly. "Deefa had her reasons for going and Shala her reasons for granting permission. Don't be cruel on top of it. Your son is a marine! Had it been _his_ squad we had lost-"

"My son has_ twenty more years_ experience than Deefa'Raan had-" he stepped up toward Koris furiously before Daro'Xen suddenly spoke up.

"This conversation is moot," she announced. "Shepard and Tali'Zorah have just redocked and are on their way here right now."

"What of Kal'Reegar?" Koris asked.

"Alive as well," Xen replied.

Shala sucked in a trembling breath of relief, struggling not to let it show. "Then let us finish this."

Turning back to the promontory she strode out and activated the chime. The Conclave, who were milling about in quietly murmuring knots, began to filter back to their seats as the Admirals took up their positions.

Shala's eyes fixed to Tali as the pair entered the plaza. She did not seem injured…neither did the human captain.

_Thank you for that_, she thought in prayer to whatever force was listening. _By the very stars, thank you at least for that._

"Captain Shepard," she said as neutrally as she was able as the two took their positions. "Tali'Zorah. What news do you bring?"

"The _Alarei_ has been cleared," Shepard replied sternly. "The geth have been eliminated and the ship is secure and awaiting a retrieval team."

"That is excellent news," Zaal'Koris said, sounding surprised. "I see your skills have not been exaggerated, Captain Shepard."

"Oh, it wasn't _my_ skills that did it," Shepard replied brusquely. "You owe the salvage of your ship and the safety of this Fleet to one person, and it's _not _me."

"Oh? Then to who?" Han'Gerrel demanded.

"Deefa'Raan vas Rayya," Shepard stated firmly. Shala felt her heart quicken, and straightened a little.

"Deefa…" she murmured.

"What are you talking about?" Gerrel demanded. "The marine unit was slaughtered-"

"Yes, they were," Shepard admitted. "When we arrived on board we, unfortunately, found the remains of the crew and the marines. However there was something _else_ we found. A fuck of a _lot_ of dead geth."

As the surprised murmur moved through the Conclave Shepard straightened and squared her shoulders. "On the entire _Alarei_ we found only _four _active geth units…however we found nearly _thirty_ already destroyed. The four still in action were damaged, and easy enough to put down. The marines put up a hell of a fight, Admirals. They did you proud."

Her synthetic eyes seemed to fix to Shala'Raan, her gaze penetrating. "Deefa was a hero, Admiral. She lived as a hero, she fought as a hero, and I'm saddened to say that she died as a hero."

Shala lowered her head slightly, the pain of grief stealing her breath a moment. Though logically she had known all the while that it was impossible that Deefa could have survived, she had clung to some thread, a desperate hope that Shepard would find her and bring her back again alive. It was the hope of a mother who did not wish to mourn her beautiful child.

It was the hardest battle she had ever fought, to choke back her emotion, the aching stab of grief that wanted to send her to her knees, wanted to make her scream at the loss of her daughter. After a moment, she steadied, and looked up again.

"Thank you, Captain," she murmured.

"This is irrelevant to the issue before us," Zaal'Koris stated. "Those marines would _not_ have died if it weren't for blind shortsightedness regarding the geth."

"Captain Shepard, do you have proof that Tali is innocent of her charges?" Han'Gerrel asked.

* * *

><p>"Shepard, please…" Tali murmured tremulously, softly enough only the human woman heard her. Shepard looked around at the young quarian she called her Mei Mei. Behind her face-plate her gold synthetic eyes were depthless, inscrutable. They seemed to hold the weight of eternity within them…and the eternity they held seemed cold and bleak.<p>

Turning back to face the Admirals, the human woman took a step forward. As she did, Tali's hand reached out, her fingers softly brushing over the arm of Shepard's hard-suit, a last terrified effort to stop the inevitable, to turn aside a tide that was so enormous, so destructive, it could wash away all life in a single moment.

As such a tide could not be turned by a single pebble, no matter how desperately thrown, neither did Tali's touch halt Shepard's forward motion as the commander stepped three paces forward…and made the decision that would change Tali's life forever.


	53. Chapter 53

_A/N: A bit of silliness to start you out. Thanks in part to Iliya Moroumetz _

_Del dramatically takes the stage, addressing the Admirals. "While Tali was helping me save the galaxy, you punks have been sitting on your duffs doing jack squat! She knows how to beat Geth! YOU should be listening to her, and…and waiting on her hand and foot with a stable of the manliest quarian men as her harem!_

_Tali blinks and starts to blush. "My own…harem?" _

_Del jabs a fist in the air. "Damn RIGHT your own harem! And they have to be oiled! OILED I tell you!_

_Tali blushes even harder. "Oh, Keelah…"_

"_And she needs an army of armored dragons that spit fire, to crush her enemies! Crush them and see them driven before her!"_

_Del's ringing voice draws to a dramatic pause, and she hooks her thumbs into her lapels as a serious, solemn, unwavering expression comes over her face. "And, ladies and gentlemen of the Admiralty Board…I assure you. She __**will **__hear the lamentations of their women."_

_Tali starts doing the Running Man in the background as the entire Conclave cheers!_

_*ahem*_

_And now for something completely different… _

* * *

><p>As Shepard stepped forward, a silence fell over the entire amphitheatre…a silence broken only by the distant heavy hum of engines, the soft hiss of the air recyc units. Shepard folded her arms, standing straight, her shoulders square…and Tali felt something sink inside her. For the very first time since they had met, Tali found her trust in Shepard wavering, leaving a tight, hollow feeling in her gut.<p>

She hated herself for that feeling.

"Admirals, I would like to see _your_ evidence first," the human woman suddenly stated.

"Captain, we-" Zaal'Koris began with a glower, but Shepard interrupted him.

"All I have seen in this farce of a trial so far is demands that Tali prove her innocence. I would like _you_ to prove her _guilt_. Show me…show these _people_…what it is that led you to the conclusion Tali had _any_ hand whatsoever in what happened to the _Alarei._"

"Tali was sending geth parts to the _Alarei_," Daro'Xen replied. "She-"

"_Proof_, Admiral," Shepard said sternly. "Where is the shipping manifest? Where is the hard documentation with Tali's name on it? Surely you have _that_, to _prove_ that she's guilty! Please tell me you are not doing this over hearsay and rumor alone."

When the silence remained unbroken for a few moments Shepard nodded. "That's what I thought. Ladies and gentleman of the Conclave…_Captains_…Tali'Zorah has proven time and time again her loyalty to this Fleet and her people. She is an irreplaceable asset to your people. Over and over again she's fought geth by my side. There is not a single man or woman alive on this Flotilla that knows more about the geth than _she_ does. Tali would give her breath, her blood, her very _life _for every one of you, and this…_this_ is what you do? With only rumor and hearsay to go on you would stand her on trial and threaten to banish her from the people she loves, the people she fights for?"

Shepard was getting heated, her voice ringing through the room. "You should be _listening_ to her! Her knowledge about the geth is invaluable...knowledge that completed her Pilgrimage and earned her a place aboard the _Neema_. A brave marine gave her _life_ because she believed in Tali. Kal'Reegar was willing to stand by her on Haestrom and on the _Alarei_ because _he_ believes in her! _I_ believe in her, and I would put _my life_ into her hands without hesitation! Tali was willing to go aboard the _Alarei _and _die_ just to protect this Fleet, to protect you…and _this_ is what you do to her?"

She jabbed a finger toward the quartet. "Yes, Admirals, I would like some _actual solid proof_ that you have _any_ ground to stand on here. I _refuse_ to believe the quarian people would cast one of their best, brightest, and bravest out of their Fleet on mere _rumor_. Or…perhaps Tali isn't what this trial is about at all, Admirals? I think what this is _really_ about is an _excuse_…an excuse to drive your people into war with the geth…or to persuade them onto a colony world somewhere. I think you saw this situation and ran with it, and poor Tali just happened to get in the way."

Glaring at the silent men and women Shepard's voice dropped just a little. "So no, I am _not_ going to _prove_ to you that Tali is innocent. She has _already_ proven that time and again with all she has poured in to her people and her Fleet. You prove to _me_ that this remarkable young woman deserves even a _sliver_ of this vitriol! If you can show me _without a doubt_ that Tali is a traitor to this Fleet, then I will take her on the _Normandy_ and you will never see _either _of us again. Because I would rather stand and fight beside this 'traitor' any day, then do the same with any of _you_."

The Conclave was rumbling, different voices rising as more than one Captain got to their feet. It was impossible to determine what each was saying but more than once Shepard heard a demand toward the Admirals of 'Prove it!' or 'Show us the proof!'

"Please, everyone, take your seats," Shala'Raan ordered. "Captain Shepard, do you have anything further to say?"

Shepard nodded, then glanced back at Tali. "No matter what happens, Tali is and always will be one of my crew…one of my _family_. If you cast her out…she will _always_ have a home, and people who know her true worth."

"Thank you, Captain," Raan murmured. "Admirals, have you made your decisions?"

Shepard stepped back to Tali's side, turning to face the Admirals again as they lit up their omni-tools. A low murmuring rumble was still moving through the Conclave. Shepard felt Tali's hand grip hers suddenly, squeezing tight.

"Thank you, Shepard," she whispered. Feeling the girl's shaking, Shepard gripped her hand back just as tightly.

A moment later, Shala'Raan looked at her own omni-tool and straightened, the motion bringing a wave of silence back down over the crowd.

"Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, please step forward."

Shepard gave the quarian's hand another gentle squeeze, before releasing it. As stoically as she was able, Tali stepped forward a pace, bravely straightening as she faced down the Admirals, ready to accept her judgment.

"Tali, with lack of sufficient evidence and in light of your actions upon the _Alarei_ and the numerous services you have provided not only among your people, but as part of Captain Shepard's crew…we declare you innocent of all charges. This hearing is concluded. Keelah se'lai."

Shepard felt a rush of relief pass through her, her shoulders loosening a little as the rumble of talk once more filled the room. Tali seemed to sag forward, hands lifting to plaster over her face-plate. Stepping up to her side, Shepard put a hand on her back.

"Tali, you ok-"

The girl whirled, flinging her arms around Shepard's neck and hugging her tightly. "Thank you!" she sobbed. "Oh, _thank you_, Jie Jie!"

* * *

><p>"Liara, the shuttle has landed. Del and Deeds are on their way here."<p>

Ori propped her hip up against the console, folding her arms companionably as she regarded the asari woman. Liara had no fewer than twelve different screens open, concentration knitting her brows.

_She looks so tired_, Ori thought. It had not escaped her notice that their Shadow Broker was not sleeping well, often up until the wee small hours working.

"Hmm?" Liara blinked, reluctantly tearing her eyes away from the feeds and focusing on the redhead as if Ori had just appeared out of nowhere.

"Sydney," Ori said gently. "Deeds? They just arrived. They should be here any moment."

"Oh…oh, thank you, Ori. I am sorry, I am distracted. You…_Deeds_?"

"Deirdre," Ori told her. "Most of us call her Dees or Deeds. Sometimes just Navis."

"So you have met her? You are all familiar with her?"

"Yeah, she drops by the Folly every few weeks. Stays a while, then goes on again. Can't keep her feet nailed down, but she's good people. Honestly, though…you think you aren't getting any sleep _now_, just wait. Syd and Dees can keep the whole goddamn ship up without even trying."

"They…?" Liara began, confused, before realization dawned. "Oh. Oh! I…I was not aware, I…"

_Goddess, Liara, you are a fool…_she thought. Here she had been so concerned about Sydney and Del's past relationship. It had never even occurred to her that Sydney might also have moved on, just as Shepard had.

"You sure you're ok, boss?" Ori asked. "Everything shiny?"

"Yes, thank you Ori. I am…just tired, is all. So much work…I should probably take a break. I would like to speak with Deirdre and Sydney-"

"Well, get those pretty blue lips a'flappin', because here we are," Sydney quipped as she strode up. Liara looked over, then rose from her chair as the blonde human woman walked up, unabashedly flinging her arms around the Liara and hugging her. "Good to see you again."

"It is good to see you again too," Liara replied, lightly returning the embrace. "You are…all right? Shepard told me, about Thane…"

"Oh, I'm ok," Sydney said, almost shame-faced. "Just…it was an old book I hadn't closed yet, you know? Wasn't expecting to be face to face with the end of it like that, after so long. I just had to get my head straight."

"I think I can understand that," Liara smiled affectionately, before her eyes moved to the asari woman standing silently a few feet behind her.

She had heard of Deidre Navis before, of course. Every asari was familiar with the Navis family. Deirdre was involved in a bit of a scandal, as well…making her even _more_ notorious. The family hadn't all been exactly pleased when Deidre's mother, Rynna, had decided to bond with another asari. It hadn't been done in the Navis line for nearly five generations…a very long time by asari standards.

More, Liara had been using her Broker sources to research even more deeply into the woman since she heard she was coming aboard. What she had uncovered troubled her a little, and she wondered if it was information that Sydney was privy too…or if the human woman was completely in the dark about her chosen companion.

Navis was lovely, of course…it was rare to find an asari that was not, after all. Her clothes were elegantly and richly made if still lending ease of use and functionality. She was truly not much older than Liara, perhaps only by a handful of years, but she had an air about her…the confidence and grace of the wisest matriarchs.

"Oh, sorry," Sydney grinned, seeing where Liara's gaze had gone. "Deeds, this is Dr. Liara T'Soni. Li, this is Deirdre Navis."

"Ms. Navis, it is my pleasure to meet you," Liara greeted with a slight incline of her head. "Sydney has told me…well, _nothing_ about you."

The asari laughed, giving Sydney a look and a gentle push. "That is because Sydney lacks quite a lot in the way of social graces," she replied. The blonde shrugged.

"Comes from being a meat-head," she said. "Oh, _and_ I'm ashamed of you."

"I'm ashamed of you too, darling," Navis replied instantly. Even if she hadn't known better, Liara could easily see from both of their expressions that neither was even remotely ashamed. That final lingering knot of jealousy over Sydney and Del's past relationship unraveled and melted away. The blonde's emotional investments were clearly solidly aimed in a different direction.

As that knot unraveled, however, a new one took its place. If Sydney did not know the true nature of Navis's work and travels…then she feared the human woman would be devastated. Given her recent encounter with Thane she could not imagine Sydney reacting with any sort of positivity to the truth…especially if she felt her trust had been betrayed.

"She has told me quite a bit about _you_, however," Deirdre replied. "You and Commander Shepard, the missing colonists, the Collectors. I am here to aide in any fashion I can."

"I appreciate that, Ms. Navis-"

"Deirdre, please," the other girl insisted. "Syd speaks nothing but accolades about Del Shepard and about you. Granted, she _does_ have hideous taste but…she has grown on me. Rather like a wart."

"Bitch," Sydney snorted.

"Well, it is good to have you here. We need all the allies we can get. Things are…well. Our position is a bit precarious-"

"Syd told me that too. I am sworn to silence about this place, and I am very devoted to my oath, Ms. T'Soni. However I also know that you have no reason to trust me save Syd's rather questionable good word…"

"Bitch times two," Syd huffed.

"…and so I submit myself to your custody, until that trust can be earned."

Liara blinked, surprised. "C-custody?"

"Indeed. There is a rather sizable detention facility on this ship, is there not? I will gladly sequester myself there. So long as I have an extranet connection I can coordinate any resources that you need, monetary or otherwise, and my data usage can be completely and fully monitored."

"And she looks smashing in chains," Syd grinned.

"_Chains_?" Liara asked, horrified. "I would not chain-"

"Relax, Li, that was a joke," Sydney laughed. "Honestly, I don't want to make you worry and I know that trust comes at a high price these days. Del trusts me but she took a risk already on my men. I can't ask her to take more, not where you're concerned. I trust Dees with my life but we want to be sure you can trust her also, not merely take our word for it. The detention center is perfectly comfortable, she'll be fine. Besides, it means _I_ know exactly where she is at all times."

"I hope you are not speaking of conjugal visits, Sydney. What kind of asari do you think that I am?"

"Oh, I _know_ what kind you are…_biblically_. Now stop flirting in front of my friend before she thinks you're utterly crass."

"I _am_ utterly crass," Deirdre pointed out, before making a rather elegant gesture toward Liara. "I am at your disposal, Ms. T'Soni."

"If you are going to insist I call you Deirdre, then I insist you call me Liara," she said. "I think…the detention center will not be necessary. However I would like to have a discussion with you, in my office?"

"You're taking a risk," Dees pointed out warily. "If I am untrustworthy, having me in your office alone-"

"I have four security mechs, a targeted weapons system, full kinetic shields and I am pretty handy biotically. I think I will be fine for a short discussion alone with you, especially if the door is left open and Wilcher is tuned in to the security vid feeds."

"Hmm. Fair enough," Deidre acquiesced.

"I'll go and kick the guys back into shape. I'm sure they've been loafing while I've been off-ship," Sydney said. "Try not to have too much fun without me, all right?"

"The only time there _is_ fun is when it's without you," Deidre replied. Heading away, the blonde turned in her stride to lift two middle fingers and a shit-eating grin at the asari, before continuing on her way.

"This way," Liara murmured, indicating a small side passage. Deidre immediately stepped in front of her, allowing Liara to take up the rear as they headed into Liara's small private office.

_She is trying to show she means no threat_, Liara thought. _She is displaying her own trust, allowing me to be at her back._

The move made her feel a little better…but only slightly. As they stepped into the office Liara went around the desk, but did not sit. Instead, she leaned her fingertips on the smooth surface and regarded Deidre firmly.

"Does she know?" she asked bluntly.

"Know…?"

"About what it is you _really_ do," Liara told her. "About…your _training_."

Deirdre's face went still before she slowly nodded. "Of course you would know…the information you have at your fingertips must be staggering. It was naïve of me to assume you would not discover that."

"Well, I have…and truth be told, my concern lies with Sydney. She is a good friend, and she means a great deal to Shepard. I would…take it rather _personally_ if she were to be hurt. As, no doubt, would Del."

"Your concern for her is admirable, Liara," Deirdre told her. "However threats are not needed. Sydney means everything to me. I would do anything for her."

"_Except_ tell her the truth," Liara noted. When the other asari said nothing, Liara had her answer. Straightening she asked, "What is it that she thinks you do?"

"My family runs several major corporations," Deirdre told her. "I do mergers and acquisitions, some merchant research, woo new clients. I have to travel extensively."

"No doubt you do," Liara said, "and no doubt some of that is true. Why do you not tell her the rest? Why keep this from her?"

"Tell her I'm an assassin for a very old and very powerful matriarch?" Deirdre scoffed. "You may not have noticed, but Sydney has little sympathy or care for assassins, Liara. If she knew the truth-"

"You would risk losing her," Liara said softly. "I understand-"

"Do you?"

"Yes, I do," Liara said firmly. "I would…I would do _anything_ to keep from losing Shepard. I have…I _have_ done unspeakable things to…"

"Yet you have never lied to her?" Deirdre asked skeptically. "Never kept a secret from her? Pretend she did not know you were the Broker, and _you_ knew that if she _did_ know she would leave you forever…probably after spitting hatred in your face, tearing apart _everything_ you ever had. Would _you_ tell her?"

"I…I do not know _what_ I would do," Liara admitted softly. "What I _do_ know is this, Deirdre. If Sydney finds out the truth, she is going to feel horribly betrayed. Her trust in you will be irrevocably shattered. You cannot hide it from her forever."

"Are _you_ going to tell her?" Deirdre asked quietly.

"No…" Liara admitted. "No, that is not my place."

"Then I think our discussion is finished," Deirdre said stonily. "If I may be excused, Ms. T'Soni? There is a lot of work that I could be doing and the sooner we get funds and resources to the Folly the better Shepard's fight against the Collectors and the Reapers will be."

"O-of course. You…of course."

The other asari turned and strode out. A moment after she'd gone, Liara lowered her head, covering her face with a hand.

* * *

><p>The light was a bright but soft white, shining off chrome and polished steel with sharpness, yet seeming to caress still and silent flesh with a mournful gentility.<p>

The quarian girl had been completely removed from her environmental suit, and lay nude upon the table, covered to the armpits with a blanket. Her long hair, a rather dark shade of burgundy highlighted with locks of rose-polished gold, lay spread beneath her head in a soft waterfall.

A lightly trembling three-fingered hand reached out and lightly touched the slope of her cheek, the line of her jaw. Flesh was separated from flesh by the suit glove still required for the living.

After a moment, the hand withdrew, before its owner almost angrily gripped her glove. Closing her wrist seal and unfastening the static bond, she peeled the glove off, baring her own pale hand to the outside air.

Again her hand returned to the still face, and at the touch of cold flesh upon hers, Shala'Raan lowered her head and began to weep…the first true tears she had shed since her daughter had gone to that ship, gone to her death.

Once the dam was broken it was impossible to stem. Lowering her head, Shala rest the edge of her face-plate against her daughter's cheek, her bare fingers tangling in that soft hair…hair she had not felt with her own skin since Deefa had been put into the bubble. Trembling, trying to stifle the sobs that would not stop coming, she was unaware she was no longer alone until she felt a gentle hand touch her back.

"Auntie Raan…" Tali murmured sadly. Struggling herself back under control, the older woman straightened, looking toward the girl at her side. A few feet away, she could see Captain Shepard lingering at a respectful distance, unobtrusive.

"Tali," Shala whispered thickly. "Please…forgive me. I was so terribly cruel to you."

"You did what you did in order to help me," Tali told her. "I see that now. I…you have always been there for me, Auntie Raan. I…I am so sorry."

"This was not your doing, Tali," Raan replied. Lifting her bare hand she took hold of Tali's shoulder, then drew her in, hugging her tightly. At the embrace her will broke down again, and she clung to the younger quarian, desperate to ease at least some of this pain.

Tali held her just as tightly, weeping as well for her lost friend. How much time passed in the embrace neither woman could say, and neither even loosened their grip until weariness replaced tears. Pressing her face-plate against Raan's, Tali murmured a soft reassurance, keeping hold of the woman's hand as she turned and looked down at Deefa's silent form.

"She was so brave at the end, Raan," she whispered. "What she did for me…for father…I will never forget it."

Shala said nothing, assuming that Tali meant Deefa insisting on going to the ship to find proof of Tali's innocence. She watched as the girl reached out, also stroking a hand lightly over Deefa's face, drifting some hair back from her forehead.

"May Rannoch's warm sun always shine upon you," she murmured, before she drew it back again. Looking at Raan she lowered her head a little. "I have to go."

"I know," Shala murmured softly, then gripped her hands tightly. "Be _safe_ out there, Tali. Come home to us soon."

"I will," Tali promised. "I have Captain Shepard watching over me and…and now Deefa too."

"Stars guide you home again," the older woman told her, before hugging her once more. Gripping tightly a moment, Tali only reluctantly withdrew, touching Raan's shoulder before looking at Deefa's serene face one last time.

Turning away, she headed back to Shepard's side. "Let's…let's go, Jie Jie. I'm…let's just go."

* * *

><p>Once they had returned to the <em>Normandy<em>, Tali said nothing, only disappeared down toward engineering after giving Shepard a final hug. Respecting the girl's need to be alone right now, Shepard ordered Joker to disengage from the Flotilla and take them out of the system back toward the Citadel. Then she went to her quarters, stowing her hard-suit and taking a long, scalding hot shower.

Drying and dressing, she slumped back on her bed with a blast of air, draping her forearm over her eyes. The whole nightmare of the Admirals, the trial, and Tali's grief kept spinning madly in her head until she finally dozed off, almost in sheer defiance of it.

She woke up a couple of hours later with a pounding headache, glancing in disorientation at her clock. It was still early evening, and she hadn't had anything to eat all day…a fact her stomach was swiftly reminding her of.

Not bothering to change out of her yoga pants and her tank, Shepard padded barefoot to the lift and then down to the mess, wanting nothing more than a strong cup of joe and a plate of somewhat edible food.

As the lift doors parted, however, she heard a strange voice speaking, a breath before peals of laughter.

"_Do you wanna rumble?"_

The laughter sharpened the throb momentarily in her head and scowling, she stepped around the lift and entered the mess, blinking in shock.

_She _was standing in the middle of the room…or rather, something that looked a hell of a lot _like_ her was. The form was made of shimmering light, almost like liquid crystal or soft glass that occasionally streamed with streaks of pale orange. Gathered around it was half the crew, including Joker, Jacob, and Chakwas.

She instantly recognized it as a VI interface but it took her a moment to remember that it was, in fact, a VI of _her_.

Mouse had been selling them on the Citadel. Shepard had asked for a copy and had uploaded it to her omni-tool. Mostly it was just out of idle curiosity…a curiosity that hadn't been strong enough for her to actually power it up. What it was doing powered up now in the middle of the mess was beyond her…yet part of her had no doubt whatsoever that Joker was behind it.

"Commander, why don't you dance for us?" Joker asked the image, unaware the real Shepard was standing unnoticed at the edge of the mess.

"_I know the tango and the foxtrot, soldier, but I only dance with asari,"_ the VI replied in its odd, high-pitched and almost nasally voice. The gathered crew roared with laughter at the response. Shepard folded her arms, striding forward a few paces, still unnoticed as all attention was fixed on her doppelganger.

Joker, a shit-eating grin still plastered to his face, swiped his hand over his beard a moment. "Commander, state your parameters."

"_This VI is equipped with an SSV Normandy flight sim! I can predict what the real Commander Shepard would say with 7% accuracy."_

"Can you maintain a filing system?" he asked, his grin twitching mischievously.

"_You should do it yourself. I have a galaxy to save."_

More laughter. Had he been capable, Joker would probably have danced in place out of glee. "How do you feel about the asari?" he asked.

"_Once you go blue, you always stay true,"_ the VI responded, prompting the largest roar of laughter yet.

As Joker opened his mouth to ask another question, Shepard suddenly spoke up instead.

"VI, what do you do with a crew that mocks their commanding officer?" she barked. Instantly every man and woman in the room startled, more than one chair falling over as their occupants jumped to their feet. Most every single hand suddenly snapped up in a salute. Joker nearly fell over as he whirled around, his face going pale.

"_I never met a problem a bullet couldn't solve!"_ the VI said cheerfully. Shepard narrowed her eyes at the pilot.

"What a _good_ idea. I _like_ the way you think."

"C-Commander, I uh…I was just…" Joker stammered, his own salute rather shaky.

"You were just _what_, Jeff?" she asked sternly.

"I-I…I…really have no good answer, ma'am," he admitted.

"Yeah, I bet you don't," she retorted, then glared around at the rest of the staring crew, most of whom were still saluting. "Jump to, people! We have a ship to run! If you're not off-duty get your asses to your duty stations, _ma shang_!"

Instantly the group began to scatter, even those off-duty quickly making themselves scarce. Chakwas was the only one who looked nonplussed, giving the Commander a smirk before disappearing casually into the medbay.

Shepard turned back to Joker. "You wanna explain how you got the VI?" she demanded.

"I…uh…well, it…"

"You are in the habit of dumping copies of the files stored in your omni-tool onto your personal console in your quarters, Shepard," EDI helpfully supplied, Joker wincing as her voice filtered down from the ceiling. "That included a copy of the VI you obtained from Mouse on the Citadel. Jeff was aware of this habit, aware you had obtained it, and asked me to retrieve a copy from your console."

"Thanks a lot, snitch," Joker mumbled under his breath.

"And you just…went along with this, right?" Shepard demanded, folding her arms.

"Jeff told me it was to be a gift. He wanted me to fix the bugs in its system and fine-tune the program to be your personal assistant. I reminded him you have both myself and Yeoman Chambers and do not need a VI assistant, but he seemed to think you would appreciate it."

Joker winced a little, involuntarily taking a step back as Shepard's demonic synthetic eyes shifted back to him.

"I…it was just supposed to be a joke, Shepard," he said weakly. "All this shit going on, being apart from Liara, the mess with Tali…I just…I thought you'd be amused, that's all. I wanted to cheer you up."

Shepard narrowed her eyes slightly at him, then regarded the VI. Wrinkling her nose she stepped closer to it, peering at its shimmering face. The VI silently observed her in turn, then suddenly spoke up again.

"_Did anyone tell you you're a hell of a looker, soldier?"_

"Jesus _fuck_, Joker!" Shepard glared at him.

"What? I didn't change _any_ of its programmed responses, those are all factory," he protested.

Shepard wrinkled her nose again, straightening as she perused her electronic self. "I _don't_ really sound like that," she scoffed, then paused. "Uh…do I?"

"No, the voice is…_wrong_," Joker replied. "I was going to have EDI instate a new one using actual direct samples of your voice print. This one was obviously badly programmed. You sound like an elf with a head-cold…"

Her withering gaze landed on him again and he cleared his throat. Then she smiled slightly…which worried him even more than her irritation had.

"Well, why don't we work on that then? You'll have plenty of time to get her up to spec, Joker."

"Uh…Commander?"

"EDI, I think Joker needs some personal attention, don't you?"

"Ma'am?" the AI inquired.

"Well, I think he needs someone to keep his appointments straight, help him with the repair roster, maintenance requisitions, nav charts…"

"Uh…" Joker blinked.

"_I_ currently perform most of those duties, Commander," EDI reminded her.

"Oh I know, but you're very _busy_, EDI…you have a whole ship to help run, after all. I don't want to rob your processing time. Do me a favor and link the VI to Joker's omni-tool and assign it those duties, would you? Make sure it gives him hourly…no, _quarter_-hourly updates on status and progress. It is to be powered on _every moment_ he is on duty until further notice."

"Aw, c'mon Commander-"

"Understood Commander," EDI agreed. The VI interface suddenly flickered, then turned its head and focused on the pilot.

"_Extranet records show you have flight training,"_ VI Shep said happily. _"Ever think about a career with the Alliance, soldier?"_

"Oh God," Joker moaned.

"_If you believe in a deity I would be more than happy to send you to meet them."_

"Aw, Commander, _c'mon_…"

"You have a helm to report to, Mr. Moreau," Shepard replied with a faint smirk. "I suggest you get to your duties…before I make her voice an octave higher and have EDI install the _Star Spangled Banner_ into her repertoire."

As the pilot saluted and stalked off…as best as he could stalk, anyway…VI Shep followed him like an obedient puppy dog.

"I am still not sure I understand this command direction, Commander," EDI stated as Shepard headed for the coffee. "It seems…unreasonable."

"Do an extranet look up for the answer, EDI," Shepard told her as she poured a mug.

"I will do so, Commander. What should I look up?"

Shepard's gold and red eyes glimmered as she lifted the mug to her lips, a thin smile appearing.

"_Payback_."


	54. Chapter 54

A/N: All right guys, this is it. The last chapter before I am in absentia until April 9th. And yes, sadly I am probably going to be a horrible, horrible person and leave this on a cliff-hanger.

It's what I do

So, while I'm gone, y'all do me a favor and keep an eye on Del for me. Make sure she doesn't get into too much trouble. You know how she is.

Keep her out of the bars, whatever you do.

* * *

><p>"Shepard, good to see you," Mordin greeted as the lab door swept open, not even bothering to look over to verify the entrant. It was only logical, after all. She had acknowledged his request to come to the lab almost immediately, and she was punctual as a rule.<p>

As well, her boots made a distinct sound on the floor, distinguishable from the rest of the crew in cadence, resonance, and weight.

"You said you had something ready for me?" she asked. Finishing his last command into the computer console, he straightened and looked at her.

He had always found humans a fascinating species. Most of his opinion stemmed from his clinical and scientific admiration. Humans were the most genetically diverse advanced species that he'd encountered. Physically they had twenty-one more genetic variations than salarians, fourteen more than asari, and an incredible sixty more than the hanar. Their limbic and adrenal systems alone had the potential for six salarian lifetimes worth of study, and he had honestly considered writing a paper on their structural differentials himself.

Imagine it! One healthy adult male human being could stand a simple 1.22 meters tall while another could stand 2.133 meters in height…and even be from the same family! That was the height difference between a volus and a krogan…all in one species!

Weight, density, muscle development, pigment development, skeletal structure, hair texture, skin texture…all so widely varied and diverse it would require a supercomputer just to determine all possible combinational variances.

Of course, the diversity was not limited merely to physical development. In personality and mental processes he could honestly say that no human being was identical to another. Habits, propensities, tendencies, cadences and resonances of speech, preferences of color, preferences of gender and sexuality, idiosyncrasies, belief systems, morality baselines, affinities and affiliations…well. It was easy to see how human beings had survived for so long. With such a wide variety of subjects, it increased the chances that out of a given population, there would be a significant number able to adapt to environmental variety. A disease variable that may wipe out an entire population of asari would only dwindle the number of humans with the same population count. Variances would mean that at least _some_ of the humans would be immune or find themselves adaptable to the disease, and the species would continue.

_Of course, asari only need one surviving member of a catastrophe to repopulate. If the individual has access to divergent species able to meld, extinction all but impossible. Given lifespan increases chances of locating such a divergent species as well. _

Humans of course, like the majority of other species, had the standard two gender approach to reproduction which drew their extinction threshold slightly closer than that of the asari. Their very diversity also demanded _access_ to that diversity to maintain a viable population. Salarian would only need four surviving members, two male and two female, in order to continue the species. Humans would need a population of at least fifty unrelated individuals in order to avoid the degradation of genetic inbreeding.

Like most bi-gendered species, as well, they were programmed with an automatic population control…one out of every ten of their kind had the genetic marker for same-sex attractions and interactions which, by its very nature, limited reproduction. Humans were advanced enough to work around that of course, using in vitro methodology to reproduce regardless of persuasion or partner, however on a basic primal level it was an old fail-safe to insure that the given population, lacking predation, did not outgrow its resources.

Shepard, of course, bore those markers, as well as a dormant carrier gene for cystic fibrosis, which would not express in her but could potentially be carried into her offspring…were her offspring born human, of course. Given her relationship with Dr. T'Soni as well as her sexual preferences it was highly unlikely that Shepard would ever bear natural offspring-

"_Mordin_," Shepard's voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts, and he blinked at her. She smirked. "You _cad_. You were dissecting me with your eyes again…and you didn't even buy me dinner first."

"Apologies, Shepard, got lost in thought. Focusing a great deal on your species, your genetic markers as well as implants, to solidify cohesion and improve performance."

"There's… a problem with my cohesion to my implants?" Shepard asked.

"No, not at current time but…potential is there. Aging brings biological change in chemistry, physicality. Could cause implant rejection in the future. Want to avoid that. Minor detail, side project, easily rectified. Most focus on nanites, prevent hacking, prevent adverse biological stimulation to signal from Harbinger. Easiest course to simply block signal."

"Make it so the nanites don't even pick it up," Shepard nodded, folding her arms as she cocked a hip against the wall, leaning as she pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"Yes. Would not hear Harbinger then. However, not ideal. Communication with Harbinger potentially essential. Might slip. Reveal plans, strategy. Valuable intel could be lost."

"I agree, but I can't be incapacitated whenever that fucker decides to gloat."

"Yes. Fortunately, middle ground. Am able to adjust nanites to receive signal and transmit without biological repercussions. Should hear Harbinger's voice…_may_ be irritation but no headache, no pressure overload, no capillary rupture. Physically much safer."

"Well, that's good to hear. What about the wireless? The way the AI and David were able to take control?"

"Simpler fix. Adjust frequency of accepted nanite signal on random quantum code fluctuation. Proper tools programmed to match rate of flux, however outside source unable to adapt quickly enough or in sufficient quantity to overtake systems again."

"I'm not a scientist doc. Quantum code…?"

"Mathematical variance based on extensive…" Pausing as he saw the look on her face he shook his head. "Doesn't matter. David referred to wireless as 'song'. Nanites functioned on one song. Now accept only a dozen correct song sequences simultaneously, sequences that change in nanoseconds. Impossible for outside influence to identify songs and notes needed fast enough to link. No control."

"Ok, I think I get it," Shepard said, then shrugged. "So long as it works, right?"

"Will work, no doubt," Mordin told her. "Seat yourself, Shepard. Will only take a few minutes to finish adjustments."

Shepard moved over and sat down on the indicated bench, Mordin moving over and lowering an interface directly over her head. As he worked on the console HI, tiny beams of light scrolled and danced over her skull.

"Eyes functioning smoothly?" He asked as he worked.

"Yeah, well enough. No problems except that everything has a bit of a vid shimmer to it."

"Normal. Impossible to get synthetic eyes perfect. Yet."

"Miranda said the same thing," Shepard said.

"Many advantages to synthetic. Might be wise to keep them. Program for infrared, ultrasonic, direct data feed, telescopic zoom-"

"No thanks. I think I just want mine back, thanks."

"Understood."

"Thank you for doing this, Mordin."

"No thanks needed. Intriguing challenge, enjoyed research, analysis, problem solving. Should be the one thanking you for opportunity."

A moment later the light died and he straightened, raising the interface. "Complete. Any sensation? Headache, vertigo, nausea?"

She paused a moment, assessing, then shook her head. "Nope. Feel five-by."

"Good. Won't be sure until direct field test with Collector signal but…confident."

Shepard got to her feet, thanking him again before heading toward the door. Just before she reached it, he called out, pausing her. "Shepard…one more thing."

"What's up?" she asked, looking back at him. He looked almost sheepish.

"Wanted to tell you, been thinking about what you said on Tuchanka, about Maelon, about genophage. Do not completely agree about genophage…necessary evil, stand by work. You were right about Maelon. Grateful you stopped me…grateful you stood by me."

Shepard inclined her head in an understanding nod, giving him a faint smile before she turned and walked out.

* * *

><p>"What did you call her?" Tali asked, looking up from her meal in the mess, her eyes meeting those of the drell sitting across from her.<p>

The man rarely came out of his room but for some reason he had emerged shortly after Tali had finally ventured out of engineering. She didn't feel like eating, her head and chest still aching with all that had happened but…she knew she had to at least try. The drell had appeared almost like magic. Tali had thought she still wanted to be alone but she was finding conversing with him was helping more than she'd thought it would.

"Siha," he replied.

"What…does it mean?"

"It is what she is," he said simply. "I…if you wish, I will tell you the legend."

"I think I would like that," Tali told him. He nodded slightly.

"In drell legend there are three who guide our lives. Amonkira is the Lord of Hunters…He protects our paths, strengthens us, guides those who seek. Arashu is our Mother. She protects and comforts…She teaches and guards us from the darkness that would seek to consume us. Kalihira is Goddess of Oceans…she decides our fate and takes us home to the Depths once our journey is done.

"The Goddess Arashu has many warrior angels. Siha is the name of the one that leads them. She is fierce in wrath, a tenacious protector. In legend…it is said that at the end of days, the Void will release its plague upon all that live. When this time comes, the angel Siha will sacrifice all, even her immortality, to battle this plague and drive it back into the Void."

"You think that Shepard is this angel?" Tali asked. Thane smiled faintly.

"Not literally, of course. I simply see a resemblance in her. She is a fierce warrior, a tenacious protector. This mission against the Collectors, against these legendary Reapers, could be likened to a plague from the Void of dark space. The parallels are there. I merely note them."

"I see. Well, forgive me but I hope the comparisons differ in one key aspect. I have no wish for Shepard to give up her life to stop them."

"Neither do I," he agreed. "However if it came to that, you know she would. Without hesitation."

"I know," Tali said softly.

"Hey, Tali," a gentle tenor interrupted as Garrus strode up. He glanced at the drell a moment before looking at the young quarian. "How are you doing?"

"A little better," she told him. "I still…well, it's just going to take time."

"I understand. Going through something like that…it's never easy."

"No, but it could have been so much worse."

"Even so, you can't discount your feelings. We're here for you if you need us. You know…your friends."

"I know, Garrus. Thank you."

* * *

><p>Barely had Shepard left Mordin's lab than Kelly tracked her down to let her know the Illusive Man wanted to speak to her. Just hearing his name put a scowl back on her face and steeled her muscles.<p>

He had told her in the beginning that he hadn't come to see her in person to maintain a level of security. He was fortunate that he'd made that decision, because their relationship had gone from cold to downright freezing. If she ever saw the man in person the very least she'd do would be to land him in a fucking hospital somewhere, drinking out of a straw.

_Keep the peace, just a little longer_, she told herself as she headed for the conference room, the holographic interface powering up at her approach. _You still need his resources for now. When this is done the fucker can kiss your ass._

The room around her dimmed as the holographic representation of the Illusive Man's ostentatious office appeared. The man turned to look at her, a strange gleam in his synthetic eyes.

"Shepard, good news. We have a Collector vessel."

Her arms had been folded the moment the holograph had started to power up…now they dropped, her face smoothing out in shock. "What?"

"A turian patrol confronted them and engaged their weapons. They were destroyed but the Collector ship was disabled…it's drifting, apparently without engines or guidance systems. It is less than an hour from your current location."

"How do you know this?"

"The turian ship's emergency beacon is still intact and transmitting. We have intercepted the signal and are temporarily blocking it from other receiving ships to give you a chance to get in there first."

"I'd rather go in with an armada at my heels than bring the _Normandy_ alone," Shepard retorted. "The Collectors took down the original _Normandy_ without even breathing hard. If that thing powers back up-"

"You are the closest human vessel, Shepard. If the turians arrive do you think they're going to allow you to just board the Collector vessel? They'll contain it, quarantine it for their own purposes…if they don't just come in and destroy it outright. We can't pass this chance up. If their computer systems are still functional EDI can mine them for data, information that may help us learn where exactly the Collectors come from, what they want, and why they are taking human colonists. Our people may even still be alive inside. We can't risk it."

Shepard scowled. She wanted to point out that, once again, _he_ wasn't the one taking the actual risks. An argument would help no one, however, and if he was right…if any of their people were on that vessel then they needed to get to them as soon as possible. It was hopeless that Nan would be aboard it, not after so long but…it might point them to where they had taken her. Alive or dead, Shepard wanted to bring her home.

"Send the coordinates to Joker. We're heading there now."

"Good luck, Shepard," he nodded. She turned and strode out of the conference room without a response.

By the time she got to the helm Joker was already correcting his course. The VI was hovering over his shoulder, silent for the moment. Of course, EDI would have halted its audio output the moment any kind of emergency situation arose. The VI was meant to be an irritation, but it was foolish for that irritation to continue when it might compromise Joker's direct duties or the safety of the ship.

As she strode up, EDI spoke before Shepard could.

"At FTL speeds we should be to the Collector vessel's location within forty minutes, Commander," she reported. "I am searching Cerberus encrypted channels to receive the turian distress beacon, but we won't be in range for a full pick-up of the signal for another ten minutes."

"Do we know anything else? Size and compliment of the vessel?"

"It appears to be a dreadnought, similar to the one that attacked the first _Normandy_ and Horizon. It is possible, however unlikely, that it is the same vessel. I will have to be within range to do a full scan of their systems before I can determine for sure."

"All right. Start the scan as soon as we drop out of FTL. Joker, locking in to dock quickly and quietly is our priority the moment we arrive. If that monster does power back up I don't want us to be in scope of its weapons if at all possible."

"Understood."

"People, we are at action level two," Shepard announced over the comm as she headed back toward CIC. "We are about to intercept a disabled Collector vessel. Full readiness alert. Samara, Grunt, Kasumi…I want you three suited and armed, we're going aboard. Medibay, stand by for potential injured in case any of our people are still aboard and retrievable. XO Lawson will assume command until I return. Let's get to it!"

* * *

><p>Shepard was suited up and fully armed by the time they dropped out of FTL. EDI immediately started her scans as Shepard and Joker grimly regarded the tableau before them.<p>

The Collector vessel was, in fact, identical to the one that they had encountered before. A great looming monstrosity it drifted idly in the deep black. Damage from the impact of weapons-fire was visible along its almost wood-like hull. Not far from it, the ruins of a small turian frigate drifted in more than a thousand pieces.

Joker whistled low under his breath, sitting forward slightly in his seat. "Gotta hand it to the turians. A single frigate managed to knock the breath out of that beast? They have some serious fight in them, that's for sure."

"Commander, the engine core of the Collector ship seems to be offline. I am picking up only minimal power. Weapons and guidance systems are completely cold," EDI reported.

"There's a…docking port maybe, just on the starboard flank," Joker said, checking his readings. "I'll bring us in as close as I can. The shuttle should be able to land there."

"Shepard, you will need to establish a direct uplink to their computer network from within the ship. When that is complete I can mine their systems for any relevant information," EDI informed.

"Understood. We're heading down to the shuttle now. Keep communications open and the _Normand_y ready. This may get hot."

Heading toward the lift, Shepard shook her head, jaw tight. _If this 'Harbinger' is lurking around it looks like Mordin's alterations to my nanites and implants are going to get their test sooner than we thought._

* * *

><p>The silence, the weight as they stepped off the shuttle and aboard the Collector ship was much the same as it had been when she, Tali, and Kasumi had gone onto the crashed geth vessel. What light filtered in here and there was dim and golden, more adept at making shadows than illuminating their path…shadows that seemed to crouch, to move.<p>

Shepard adjusted her HUD for semi-infrared, and everything that was hidden in these pools of dark showed up as faintly glowing outlines. Weapons ready, the four moved carefully forward and into the ship, but only that impenetrable silence greeted them.

"This…architecture, is unique," Samara murmured, her eyes travelling over the corridor. It seemed almost carved from earth, supported by metallic struts and occasionally broken by odd, honeycomb shapes that were the source of the soft golden glow. "I have not seen the like of it before."

"It looks like a giant insect hive," Kasumi noted. "Guess that makes sense, given what the Collectors look like."

"Just keep your eyes peeled for hostiles or any of our people," Shepard replied. "Ship this size could have thousands of crew. I'd rather not have to fight them head on with just the four of us."

Kasumi shimmered and vanished from sight as she moved forward, scouting ahead carefully. As the corridor joined onto a larger room her voice filtered back to them over their ear buds.

_{Far end of the room, Shep…there's…Jesus. I just…}_

"Take a deep breath, Kasumi, we're almost there. What are you seeing?" Shepard replied.

_{Bodies…a lot of them. Human bodies. Shep…this is bad.}_

Spotting the woman as her cloak fell, Shepard headed her direction, gesturing at Grunt and Samara to cover the junctures joining to the room. Even before she got to Kasumi's side she could see for herself, and felt her stomach clench in a greasy knot.

Dozens of human bodies were cast against a wall, haphazardly piled, carelessly thrown as if they were refuse. They were in varying states of decay, the ones near the bottom clearly in advance stages of putrescence. Bloated, blue-black faces seemed to grimace up at her from the heap, curled fingers seeming to beckon for help, gaping jaws drawn by contracting muscle tissue seemed to utter silent cries of agony.

Some were nude, some still wore clothing. Men, women…thankfully no children that she could see. Gritting her teeth she stepped closer, forcing herself to be clinical, to see if she could spot wounds or marks…anything to tell her how they died.

"EDI, Miranda…this is Shepard," she spoke.

_{We're receiving,}_ EDI replied.

"There's a lot of bodies here. They are piled in a corner. Human bodies, in varying states of decay. It's hard to see direct injury…I think I can make out ligature marks on some…perhaps injection points on others but the skin is so mottled and discolored it's difficult to tell."

_{Shepard, scan them with your omni-tool,}_ Miranda suggested. _{EDI can assess the readings directly.}_

Shepard powered up her omni-tool and cast its scan over the corpses on the top of the pile. Dead eyes glimmered faintly in its orange glow, making them almost seem to shift and wink. In the light, she saw something else.

_{Data received,}_ EDI told her as the beam died. _{Analyzing.}_

"There's something else here," Shepard said, edging closer to the pile as she took a risk and switched on her omni-light. "Some motion near…"

_{What is it Shepard?}_ Miranda asked.

"Bugs," Shepard grimaced in disgust. "Tiny…no bigger than gnats, but a lot of them. They're clustered on some of the bodies. Around the eyes, lips…"

_{I am reading no live organic tissue from the scan, but there are several miniscule electromagnetic signatures,}_ EDI said. _{It is my conclusion that these insects are synthetic. If you are able to take a sample, Dr. Solus can perform a more in-depth study as to their purpose and nature.}_

"Fuck," Shepard whispered. "EDI, I don't exactly have something to put them in-"

"Here, Shep," Kasumi murmured, offering a small sealable container. When Shepard looked at her she shrugged. "Part of my tool-kit. Not everything of value is in solid form. Even fluid needs to be stolen now and again."

Shepard accepted the container and cracked it open. Grimacing with distaste, she managed to scrape several of the tiny creatures into it, then sealed it tight again before slipping it into her pouch. "We've got the sample. Any luck on the analysis?"

_{It is not completely conclusive, the organic tissue is too far degraded,}_ EDI told her_. {However from what I can determine it is my belief these humans were used in various experiments.}_

"Can you tell what kind of experiments?"

_{They seem to be chemical in nature, perhaps judging how human physiology stands up to various toxic substances or viral infestation. Some seem to have been dissected, others bear marks of electromagnetic and plasma burns. Various organs also seem to have been harvested.}_

"But we can't confirm exactly what or why?" Shepard sighed.

_{It is impossible to speculate without further information. It is likely that the computer systems of the ship may hold records that will better direct us. I suggest continuing to look for an interface for the uplink.}_

"Will do."

"Shepard," Grunt spoke up. She turned her head, looking at the boy who gestured at the tunnel he had been covering. "No sign of hostiles but I can see a light not too far down this way. Looks like an active console maybe."

"Hang on, EDI, we may have something," Shepard said, heading that way.

The corridor was short, and widened into a large niche, before continuing on. It looked like a small lab of some kind had been set up in the niche…and Grunt was right. The light was from a console that was powered up next to a trio of the same strange pods they had seen on Horizon.

Kasumi hurried up to the pods as Shepard strode toward the console. "I've got an active interface here, EDI…I'm hooking you in now."

_{Link established…accessing. This is a stand-alone terminal, not linked to the main system. I have found several data files regarding the medical experimentation, however. Analyzing.}_

"Shep, two of these are empty but…this one has a body in it," Kasumi told her. "Looks like a Collector."

Shepard moved over, glancing within. "Well, fuck me," she murmured. "Miranda, we have a body here. It's a Collector. Looks like they were experimenting on him just as they were on the humans we found."

_{We haven't been able to examine a Collector's corpse,}_ Miranda said, surprised.

"I know, they all dissolve with that weird acid shit when they die. I guess they have a way to turn it off when it suits their purposes. He's a pretty big boy, I don't think we have the time or manpower to pull him onto the ship but I can at least do another scan."

As she ran her omni-tool over the body, the asari nearby shifted slightly.

"Shepard, I feel disquiet," Samara stated. "We should have come across some of the crew by now. This…does not feel right."

"Maybe they're all dead," Grunt snorted. "They dissolve right? Like you just said? Maybe the turians overloaded their systems and they were hit with a radiation pulse when their engines went down. Fried the lot of them, and then they melted."

"Maybe, but we haven't seen any puddles of acid either," Shepard said. "My gut is with you, Samara. Something is seriously not right here."

"Hmm," Grunt frowned, lowering his head a little. "Yeah. I'm with you. This whole place feels…wrong. Like…static before a storm."

_{My analysis is complete. Shepard, I have found something remarkable.}_

The tone in EDI's 'voice' made Shepard blink. Usually even and calm, the AI actually sounded…surprised.

"What is it?"

_{According to the records in this console the Collectors were doing comparison experiments between human physiology and their own. Your scan on the Collector remains shows they were inflicting direct chemical and anatomical comparisons, and even DNA co-compatibilities.}_

"Co-compatibilities?"

"Please tell me the Collectors aren't trying to breed with us," Kasumi groaned.

_{No, that does not seem to be the point of their study,}_ EDI reassured. _{However I noticed that the genetic structure of the Collector body was familiar. They have unique quad-strand DNA that has only been found in one other species. Minute and rare samples found in Prothean ruins match this quad-strand structure.}_

"So…what? Collectors are related to the Protheans?" Shepard blinked.

_{No, Commander. It is my conclusion that the Collectors __**are**__ the Protheans.}_

_Oh, Liara is going to flip her shit,_ was the first thought that popped into Shepard's head, even before she managed to really wrap her head around it.

"How is that possible? The Protheans were wiped out."

_{The genetic code is similar enough to leave no doubt as to origin, however it has gone through significant genetic rewrite. It has been artificially repurposed. It is possible the Reapers altered the genetic code of Protheans they captured in order to create the Collectors. It will take time to deduce more from these samples.}_

"Could that be what they're doing to the humans they take?" Kasumi asked. "Repurposing their DNA to make them mindless slaves?"

_{It is possible. I do not have enough information to give a solid conclusion.}_

"All right, we can't just stand here speculating," Del ordered. "We still need to find a console that links into the main network. Let's get moving."

* * *

><p>Shepard was not usually one to actually despair. When it seemed such a sensation was about to come over her, more often than not she merely lowered her head and bulldogged right through it. Focus on the next task. Keep moving. Keep fighting. Keep on.<p>

It took something she couldn't shoot, stab, or strangle to make her truly despair, to truly feel helpless. She had felt it when Liara was shot by Tela Vasir and lay dying, her warm blood on Shepard's hands. She had felt it when Nan had called her to tell her about what had happened to Paul.

She was trying not to feel it now, trying not to imagine Nan at the bottom of a pile of bloated, tortured bodies. She fought the image of her being experimented on, or changed into something servile, hopeless, inhuman.

Standing now at the edge of the abyss, Shepard could feel the tide of that battle slipping into defeat.

The entire center of the Collector ship was hollow. Thousands…_millions _of pods lined walls that sailed away into the distance, arched more than three hundred feet above. Each was identical to the one she'd pulled Esmé and her family out of. Each was identical to the one Nan had no doubt been thrown into back on Freedom's Progress.

The sheer scope and volume of them staggered her to her core. These were more than their colonies could ever hope to fill. The Collectors had no need for this many unless they planned to hit a major population center.

Unless they planned to hit _Earth_.

Kasumi looked ill behind her face-plate as she silently took in the sight. Even Grunt seemed grim and humbled.

"Shepard, there is a console over on that platform," Samara said gently, the first to break the atmosphere. Shepard tore her eyes away from the abyss and looked in the direction that the matriarch indicated. A console interface was indeed lit up on the edge of a promontory platform, a wide octagon that formed a kind of balcony over the massive room. Shipping her rifle, her jaw tight, Shepard strode that way.

"EDI, we have an active console. I'm going to link you in. See if it connects to the network."

_{I am prepared, Shepard.}_

Powering up her omni-tool, Shepard established the connection. Instantly the console interface lit up, information scrolling across its display faster than any human eye could follow.

_{I have connection,}_ EDI informed unnecessarily. _{ Shepard, this console is indeed connected to the main network hub. I have access to most systems. Data mine in progress.}_

"Shepard…I think something moved," Grunt suddenly rumbled. Without lowering her arm, Shepard turned her head and looked at the young krogan as he gestured upward. Samara and Kasumi both backed in closer, weapons in hand as they scanned for a threat.

Drawing her pistol Shepard's eyes crept over every nook and cranny of the wall above them, narrowing when she saw a shift in the shadow.

She saw a metallic glint, and then an all too familiar shape emerged from a crevice and turned toward the platform upon which they stood. Her eyes went wide. "Fuck…_move_!" she cried out.

A flash of light and a stream of smoke zipped directly toward them, even as the four flung themselves to the side. Shepard dove, time seeming to slow as her eyes widened, her body stretching out. Her gaze was on Kasumi, who was also mid-leap. The thief was far too close to the edge of the platform, and even in that half-heartbeat of pause, Shepard realized that Kasumi was about to tumble right off the side of it…off the side and to a sheer drop of more than a hundred feet.

Then electricity filled the air in snaps and sparks of white, every muscle in Shepard's body seemed to seize in a flare of unbelievable agony that seared her to the core, and she drew away to darkness.


	55. Chapter 55

A/N: YAYYYYYY! I'm back!

I say YAY for two reasons. Firstly, I can WALK muffintruckers! No cane, no limp…I am a walkin' machine!

Secondly, you will not believe how much I missed Del. It's insane how much you can miss a fictional character. I will tell you, two weeks of not being able to write has prompted a lot of ideas…most are for DE3 but you will see some others appear soon

At any rate, I've kept y'all waiting more than long enough. On with the show!

* * *

><p>Gloved hands gripped each other frantically, muscles shaking with determination. As the platform around them jolted, Shepard felt her grip loosen ever so slightly, and grit her teeth, holding harder. "I <em>won't<em> let go," she snarled.

Kasumi's feet were hanging over a hundred feet of open air…a distance that was now increasing, as the platform they were on began to rise into the air. Shepard, on her stomach and awkwardly gripping a protrusion with her free hand in order not to fall off herself, could feel her muscles starting to cramp. She had no leverage to actually pull the woman up and after that shock she had sustained, her arms felt like overcooked noodles.

The shock had rendered her only momentarily unconscious. A burning, metallic taste in her throat punctuated her opening her eyes, and almost instantly her gaze had landed on the hands gripping the smooth edge of the platform frantically. Kasumi had caught herself at the last moment but could not hold. Del had lunged forward just in time to catch her hand as it slipped free, and now they were here.

She felt the woman's fingers slip through hers another centimeter, and she shifted forward ever so slightly, trying to maintain her hold. Her grip on the protrusion was sliding as well, her fingers aching as she fought to hold on, she was now in danger once again of falling over right after the thief.

"Kas, _hold on_…" she urged, but both of them had lost their strength. Shepard's arm felt like it was on fire and her fingers were loosening more and more. Kasumi was about to break free.

Desperately, Shepard released the protrusion and flung her free hand down, grabbing the thief's wrist in a final frantic attempt to help her. The motion and the release of her anchor, however, tipped the balance. Even as she grabbed on she felt her momentum growing as she slid inexorably toward the drop herself, the cant of the moving platform only increasing her speed. In less than a heartbeat, Shepard's shoulders and torso were off the platform, both she and Kasumi starting to fall.

Then, they halted, blue fire surrounding them. Shepard met Kasumi's wide eyes, both women letting out almost simultaneous gasps of relief. Lifted effortlessly through the air, they settled safely to the floor of the platform.

Laying there only a moment until her heart started beating again, Shepard lifted her head and sat up, looking over at Kasumi. "You ok?"

"I think I saw my entire life flash before my eyes," Kasumi said shakily, then nodded. "Yes, I'm all right, I think."

Turning her gaze to Samara, Shepard could see the asari woman still looked a little dazed, slightly paler than she should. Getting to her feet she gripped her arm lightly, peering into her eyes. "Are _you _ok?"

"I got up a shield but it was an overload rocket," the woman said. "The shield only made it detonate more swiftly. Grunt and I sustained the brunt of the electric shock but I think I will be fine."

"Grunt?" Shepard asked, looking past the asari. The krogan boy looked even more dazed, his eyes unfocused as he peered up at her from where he was sitting. One side of his plates looked scorched. "Grunt, you five-by?"

"I'm fine," he grumped, forcing himself to his unsteady feet. "Nothing more than a massage."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Shepard mumbled, before she headed back toward the console. The platform was still moving, sailing swiftly into the cavernous room. In the distance, she could see similar platforms converging on them…and she doubted they'd be empty.

"Focus fast," she told the krogan boy even as she drew her rifle. "Looks like this party is about to get even _more_ exciting."

* * *

><p>"I have completely lost contact," EDI stated. Though Joker barely glanced at the blue orb hovering near his left arm, he was surprised to hear what sounded like actual <em>concern <em>from the AI.

_Don't be silly. It's a machine, a computer. Computers don't __**have**__ feelings. At least, not any good ones…ones that don't involve shooting or setting organics on fire, anyway._

On his other side, the Shepard VI was standing in muted silence, a shimmering yellow ghost of the Commander.

_She might even __**be**__ a ghost right now_, he thought, before shaking his head once, refocusing on his work.

"I'm attempting to re-establish communication," he told her. "What happened?"

"I do not know. However I have a suspicion, and if it is correct, we are going to see that ship starting to power up its systems again very soon."

"_Normandy_ to shore party, _Normandy_ to shore party, can you hear me Commander?" He urged. The sound of static was the only response. As he tried to boost the signal he said, "If that ship powers back up we're pancake batter. What's your suspicion?"

"I have just _confirmed_ my suspicion. This is a trap. We need to re-establish communications."

"Yeah, no kidding," he grumped, and tried again. "_Normandy_ to shore party, Commander, are you reading me?"

Static hissed again a breath before a voice finally replaced it. _{This is Shepard. We're all right. We're on some kind of platform and we've taken a lot of heat.}_

"Commander," EDI broke in. "This entire situation is fabricated. I have just confirmed that this is a trap. The turian signal beacon was falsified. More, I believe the Illusive Man was aware of this fact."

_{What?}_ Joker could hear the absolute fury in Shepard's voice even over the com. It wasn't the hot fury that preceded her beating the shit out of something…this was the cold, almost calm fury that promised nothing short of hellfire and brimstone and utter destruction. _{You're absolutely sure?}_

"Turians use secondary encryption on their communications and emergency signals. It is corrupted in the signal that we received."

_{I have no doubt this is a trap, we kind of figured that out on our own, but you're __**positive**__ the Illusive Man was aware?}_

"I do not see how he could not be. The software I used to detect the corrupted encryption was written by him. He could not have failed to detect it himself before forwarding us the information."

_{That goddamn zhu tou son of a yanse lang! Chou wang ba dan! Cao! Shen jing bing!}_

Joker didn't understand nearly half of what she said, but he leaned back slightly anyway, as if her words were a blowtorch that might suddenly aim in his direction.

"Commander, I need you to re-establish my uplink to the network. I can complete my data-mine and possibly take control of the platform you are on if I am able to infiltrate their systems," EDI told her, nonplussed.

_{I'm re-linking now. Get what you need and get us the fuck out of here. We can't take this entire ship on our own.}_

* * *

><p>It did not take EDI long to insert herself into the systems of the ship. Shortly after, the platform returned to its base and docked, allowing them off their isolated little island. Not far behind them, new platforms were beginning to swing in, the once absent crew of the vessel now painfully in evidence.<p>

Shepard was like a tempest from the moment she set foot on solid ground again. Her fury at the Illusive Man's betrayal was clamped down, screwed tight, and poured into a controllable force she wielded like a revenant against their converging, insectile enemy. Even Grunt blinked once or twice in observance of it. He hadn't realized humans could go into a blood rage.

Even so, their fight was not easy. They were battling for every foot, EDI struggling to remain in the system even as the Collectors tried to purge her. Doors she would unlock for them would remain open only seconds before they would slam shut again, forcing her to attempt another path. All the while, the ship's cold systems were slowly powering back on. If the weapons regained firing ability, the _Normandy_ would be lost. They had to get back before that happened.

Shepard's back and shoulders slammed against a wall as a swarm of husks appeared just around the corner, snatching her last grenade off her belt as she did so. "Fire in the hole," she called, even as she pitched it toward the abominations.

There was a bark and a cough of flame. Half of the husks dissolved into cybernetics and ash, several of the remaining half catching fire. Almost in tandem she and Grunt rounded out from cover, their rifles erupting into life to mow down the remainder.

**SHEPARD.**

The voice took her by surprise as the last husk dissolved. A cold ache ran down her spine, a similar feeling to hearing the sound of nails on a chalkboard, but Mordin's failsafe seemed to be working. The voice was irritating, as he said, but her head didn't feel like it was about to explode.

Gesturing firmly at Grunt to take point, Shepard didn't pause as she turned her rifle to aim at the pair of Collector soldiers that just appeared from the rear, waving Samara and Kasumi ahead after Grunt as she took them out.

**SHEPARD.**

"Fuck off," she growled through her teeth, heading after her team.

**I KNOW THIS HURTS YOU.**

"Not any more it doesn't, _fucker_," she snapped. Hearing her, Kasumi gave her an odd look. Shepard shook her head and pointed firmly forward.

**YOUR RESISTANCE IS POINTLESS. WE WILL HAVE YOU SHEPARD. EVEN IF WE MUST TEAR YOU APART.**

"EDI, how close are we to that exit?" Shepard shouted into her ear-bud, putting on speed as she heard Grunt open fire ahead of her. Her shield generator was beeping at her. The amount of heat they'd been taking had finally overloaded it, leaving nothing but her pads between her and instant death if the Collectors managed to place a good shot.

_{Fifty more yards, Shepard. You are nearly there.}_

The four were at full speed now, turning down the last corridor and seeing the hovering shuttle in the distance, waiting for them. The final sprint would not be easy, however…drones and husks seemed to be pouring out of every crevice.

Gunfire and biotics filled the air, none of the four daring to slow any more than necessary as they mowed a path. Catching up to Kasumi and Samara in the final yards Shepard all but shoved them ahead of her, barking '_go' _as she whirled to cover their flank. Baring her teeth, she raked a screen of bullets over the onrushing foe, knocking down three drones and tearing the legs out from under a pair of husks, even as she continued to move backward toward the shuttle.

"Shepard!" Kasumi suddenly shouted, even as Del turned to make the final run for it…and nearly collided with the drone that had somehow gotten behind her.

No…_not_ a drone. Its carapace had cracked as if the being beneath it had swelled somehow, its eyes yellow balefire.

Too close for her rifle to be of any use, Shepard reflexively punched even as the thing grabbed her. Her fist slammed into what passed for its jaw hard enough to turn its head, her hand flaring with white heat up her arm as every single finger seemed to break at once. It was like punching steel.

Her feet left the ground as the thing gripped her upper arms, hauling her up into the air like a parent might haul a petulant child.

**SHEPARD. WE HAVE YOU.**

"_Fuck you,"_ she snarled, a breath before its skull evacuated, black ichor splashing over her face plate. Her head snapped back at the same time, as if someone had tied a string to the back helmet and then given it a sharp yank. She heard the sharp crack of the casing.

The possessed Collector collapsed forward, the yellow light in its eyes fading. Shepard hit the ground with her back a breath before the dead thing dropped on top of her, its weight enough to bark the air from her lungs, make her ribs and gut protest sharply even through her hard-suit.

"_Shepard!_" She dimly heard Kasumi's voice. A shimmer of blue swept past her face plate and the weight on her lifted, shifting aside before dropping again. Almost instantly it was replaced by Kasumi's face, her brown eyes wide. Then she was gone, pulled aside by Samara as Grunt descended.

Her stomach lurched sickeningly as the young krogan hauled her up, flinging her over his shoulder. With a struggling gasp, her lungs began to work again, drawing air. Moments later Grunt laid her back on the bench in the shuttle, the door lowering shut as the shuttle swept away from the Collector ship.

"Shepard," Grunt mumbled. She managed to focus on his face and saw something strange in his blue eyes.

She had never seen a krogan look horrified before.

Before she could respond, Kasumi's voice drew near again. "Is she alive?" she asked tremulously. "Grunt, is she-"

"I'm fine," Shepard rasped and shifted, trying to push herself into a sit. Kasumi grabbed her in an attempt to keep her down, and Shepard…not ungently…blocked her attempt and got upright. Unfastening her helmet, she grunted faintly as she drew it off, the motion making her neck and hand protest. Sweat-dampened hair fell over her forehead as she turned the helmet over, regarding it.

The front top of the casing had broken, the metal and reinforced ceramic beneath sharply bent, just over the forehead. The rifle shot that had killed the possessed drone had hit her helmet just high enough that it had deflected rather than penetrating.

With a snort, as if it meant nothing, Shepard cast the helmet aside and touched her ear bud. "_Normandy_, we're docking now…get us the fuck _out of here_ the moment we're in."

_{You don't have to tell me twice,}_ he replied.

"Anyone hurt?" she asked, panting a little as she peered up at the other three.

"You're the one that got shot in the head and you're asking if _we're_ ok?" Kasumi asked. Shepard gave her a look and the thief just shook her head. "I'm fine. Just a bit exhausted. Maybe a few bruises but nothing to write home about."

"We are fine, Shepard," Samara said calmly.

"Yeah," Grunt echoed. "Once again, _you're_ the one that had all the fun."

Though his words seemed meant to be joking, Shepard could tell his heart wasn't in it. Big and strong as he was, Grunt was still little more than a boy. He had made a stupid mistake, taking that shot at the Collector with Shepard so close to it, and he knew it.

Giving him a tired smile, she shook her head, the motion brief and ginger. "What can I say? I don't like to share," she teased back. She felt the faint bump as the shuttle settled, and immediately pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the ache in her gut and chest as she did so. Grunt picked up her cast aside helmet, one blunt finger brushing over the dent before he followed her out onto the deck.

"Joker, are we clear?" she asked even as she strode for the lift.

_{We just hit FTL…right in the nick of time, Commander. Another second and we would have been carved in half.}_

"I want a full goddamn report, and tell Miranda to get the Illusive Man on the line, ma shang!"

_{Yes, ma'am,}_

Catching Kasumi's glower as the small thief caught up with her, Shepard lowered her head a little, conceding. "I'll be in the infirmary. EDI can fill me in there."

_{Understood.}_

* * *

><p>"It was indeed the same ship that attacked the <em>Normandy<em> two years ago," EDI's blue orb supplied. "The same that infiltrated Horizon."

Shepard sat on the edge of the bio-bed, her face grim as Chakwas ran a pulse generator over the back of her neck, easing the whiplash she'd sustained when she'd been impacted by Grunt's shot.

"Same fucking ship," she grumped softly. "Of _course_ it was the same fucking ship."

"I was also able to retrieve a great deal of navigational information from its databases," EDI continued. "I believe I can pinpoint the location of the Collector home world based on this data."

"That's _something_ at least," Shepard agreed. "Any chance you found out what the fuck they're doing with our people?"

"Unfortunately no. If that information was in their network, it was too heavily encrypted for me to access in the time that I had. I have deduced, however, that the Collectors use an advanced IFF system to safely access and pass through the Omega 4 relay. I can provide more information during the crew briefing."

"Good. Good work, EDI. You did a great job getting us out of there and getting us this intel. I owe you one."

"I…you are welcome, Shepard," EDI replied, actually sounding a little flustered. As her interface vanished, Chakwas switched off the pulse generator.

"There, that should do it," she said. "Take it easy on that hand, Commander. No boxing for at least two days. Four fractured fingers are nothing to sniff at, and you'll break them all over again if you go hitting anything harder than a pillow in the next few days."

"I'll try and keep that in mind."

Chakwas lifted a brow, striding toward her desk as Shepard slipped off the bio-bed, shifting her head from side to side as she tested her neck.

"I would, however," Helen continued as she walked, "like to discuss this."

She plucked Shepard's helmet off of the desk, holding it up meaningfully as she turned around.

"What's to discuss?" Shepard asked.

"A half inch lower and that shot would have been in your skull, and _we_ would have been out our Commander."

"He's a _boy_, Helen. A _krogan _boy at that. He got gung-ho, made a mistake. He also probably saved all our lives by taking that shot. If he hadn't dropped that fucking drone as fast as he did, we may not have made it back in time to get the _Normandy_ to FTL."

"I know, and I know he's young, Commander, but that single mistake could have been fatal. If nothing else, I don't want to be the one to tell Liara that you took a bullet to the brain…especially not if it's friendly fire. It's going to be a big enough mess when she finds out about this much-"

"She's _not_ going to find out," Shepard said sternly. "She doesn't need to know."

"Shepard-"

"She's got enough worries on her mind, Helen. My helmet did its job. I wasn't hurt. Knowing about this will only upset her and it's not necessary."

"She'll find out eventually. She _is_ the Shadow Broker," Helen pointed out.

"Then I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, done is done. I'm fine, and Grunt will never make that mistake again, you can bank on it."

Chakwas sighed, then nodded as she handed Shepard the helmet. "As you want, Commander."

_{Shepard, the Illusive Man is on the line,}_ Miranda's voice broke in. Shepard's jaw steeled.

"If you'll excuse me, Helen."

The doctor nodded, watching as Shepard turned and strode out.

_I hope the fire suppression systems are in good condition_, she thought as the Commander left. _With the heat that Shepard's about to lay down I have a feeling we're going to need them._

* * *

><p>"<em>Wo xi wang ni man man si, dan kuai dian xia di yu!" <em>

"Shepard, you are not seeing the big picture," the Illusive Man said calmly, letting a stream of smoke out of his nostrils as he gently scrubbed the remains of his cigarette out in a nearby tray.

"Big picture? _Big fucking picture_?" Shepard snarled, incredulous. "You want to know what _I_ see? I see that you fucking _lied_ to us, let us walk right into a trap…a trap that _could_ have gotten my crew killed! _Ni shi bai chi!_"

Though the depth of Shepard's rage was clear on her face, it was also betrayed by her increasing use of Chinese. Though not a native speaker, Shepard almost unconsciously switched to Mandarin whenever she was especially pissed off…and right now, she was _especially_ pissed off.

"Yes, I knew it was a trap," the Illusive Man explained. "However I also knew that we had to take every advantage of this opportunity. The potential was too great to pass up…and it paid off. Thanks to your venture, we now know the location of the Collector home world, and how their ships pass safely through the relay. If we can manage to get hold of one of those IFFs we will be able to pursue them right into their nest. You'll be able to find Nancy."

"Do _not_ bring her into this!" Shepard spat. "You could have told me it was a trap. We could have been prepared!"

"By doing so the Collectors may have been alerted and taken alternative steps," he said. "It was a risk, I agree…but you and your crew are the best, Commander. I knew you would be able to handle the situation and I was right. Here you are."

"Ni juede wo hen ben ma?" she demanded.

"No, I do _not_ think you're an idiot," he replied, now starting to sound irritated. "On the contrary, I have extraordinary faith in you and your talents. That's why I brought you back. That's why I knew that you'd handle this challenge with aplomb. Like it or not, Shepard, hard decisions have to be made. Risks have to be taken, or we stand no chance of stopping the Reapers or getting our colonists back. You don't like the decision I made…that's fine. However the facts are with me and you know it. We are ten steps closer than we were, thanks to this venture. You and your crew made it out unscathed. Now we put this behind us and continue on, get the job done."

Shepard didn't speak, merely pointed at him, a universe full of threats and promises behind her hard, synthetic eyes before she snapped around on her heel and strode away from the influence of the holographic field.

* * *

><p>"That can't be right," Miranda said in a low, baffled voice. Her blue eyes were fixed to the pulsing light on the galaxy map floating above the conference table.<p>

"My calculations are correct, Operative Lawson," EDI affirmed. "All available data points to this conclusion. This is the location of the Collector home world."

"The galactic core," Shepard murmured softly, arms folded and chin lowered as she regarded the map as well.

"That's the reason no ship has ever returned," Jacob added from his seat. "It's normal for a ship to drift when hitting a relay…sometimes quite a distance. You got a 'landing zone' made up of exploding suns and black holes and that drift would be deadly."

"That must be what the specialized IFF does," Shepard agreed, straightening. "Activates more advanced relay protocols that eliminate the drift."

"Logic would then conclude that a small safe zone exists beyond the relay," EDI agreed.

Shepard hummed thoughtfully under her breath, then nodded. "Even more reason to get our hands on one of those IFFs. EDI, forward this information to Liara. See if she can't dig up any research information on mass relays that might help her to possibly fabricate one of these IFFs. It's a slim chance but it would be easier to build our own than try and heist one off another Collector ship."

"I will do so immediately, Commander," EDI replied.

"Miranda, stay on the intel yourself," Shepard added, looking at her XO. "See if you can't find a way to get us an IFF by other means if need be. Everyone, dismissed."

There was a low rumble as the group rose from their collective seats and began to file out. Shepard remained where she was, artificial pupils still affixed to the location marker hovering over the galactic core.

_Is that where you are, Nan? Lost somewhere in the very hub of our galaxy? I'm going to find you. I swear it. I'm going to __**find**__ you and bring you home again._

* * *

><p>Sitting on the edge of her bed, a cigar slowly smoldered between her teeth,Shepard leaned forward, her hand against her forehead, eyes closed. Deep inside, she was still all but trembling in unadulterated anger over what had happened. <em>Her<em> safety was one thing…she had no particular desire to die but she could _handle_ danger, handle injuries. It was part of the job description.

However you didn't fuck with her _crew_. Kasumi, Samara, Grunt…they could have been killed. Kasumi very nearly _had_ been. The Collector ship could have torn the _Normandy _to shreds…again. Joker, Kelly, Tali and the engineers, Miranda…_everyone_ could have been lost. All because that fucking _asshole_ hadn't bothered to warn her she was walking right into a blazing fire.

One day, she was going to find that man, and she was going to _skin him alive_.

Shifting the stump of her cigar moodily she was unsurprised by the chime that came from her omni-tool. She didn't even have to look at the ident to know who it was, merely answering the call and activating the projector.

"The galactic core?" Liara said softly as she appeared. Shepard looked up at her with a grim nod. She said nothing about the Illusive Man and his 'trap', nor about Grunt and his mistake. As she had told Chakwas, Liara had enough on her mind…far more than she needed or deserved. Knowing such details would do her no good right now, though Shepard was already cringing internally about what would happen when she _did_ find out.

_She __**will**__ find out. It's inevitable._

"According to the nav data we were able to mine," she said aloud, plucking out her stogie and getting to her feet. "It's not so bad, though."

"_Not so bad_? Shepard, the core is a tangle of thousands of black holes, impossible gravity wells, intense radiation and nearly constant supernovae-"

Shepard smirked and shrugged. "Yeah. Walk in the park."

"Please, do not be flippant," Liara said in exasperation. "This is serious."

"I know, Tianlán, I know," Shepard said gently, holding up her hands in surrender. "However if that is the location of the Collector home world than it stands to reason that there is some kind of safe zone, some small harbor at least. All we need is that IFF and we're golden, dong ma?"

"Such a simple request," Liara said with light sarcasm, folding her arms. She shook her head. "I will do what I can, but I do not hold out much hope that we can manufacture one. There would be no way to tell if it is calibrated perfectly enough without extensive testing...which would take months. Final stage testing would require passing a…a _drone_ at least through the relay itself, and even then it's hypothetical at best that that drone would be able to transmit viable data back to this side, if it survives."

"I was afraid you were gonna say that. Months, we _haven't_ got. Work on it if you can, but in the mean time it looks like we'll be hunting down another way to get an IFF."

"Just…be careful," Liara urged.

"I will," Shepard promised, then cleared her throat, her hands on her hips. "Well, I do have some good news. Miranda tells me that my new eyes will be ready in another week. Not that I'm not digging the cybernetic hellhound look but…"

Liara smiled softly. "That _is_ good news. I have some of my own, as well. Sydney has returned, and she tells me that the Folly will be ready to accept the _Normandy_ to begin on those upgrades at about the same time. I will be going as well. The upgrades should take nearly a week, with crews working around the clock. It is…time that we can spend together."

Shepard felt her shoulders loosen, a smile appearing on her face. "Your news is better than mine," she teased lightly. "Normally I don't take losing easily but…this time I'm happy to be defeated."

Liara's form stepped closer, one hand lifting to hover over Del's cheek, before it lowered. "I will see you then, Del."

"Sweet dreams, Liara," Shepard murmured back. As the holograph faded, the call ending, Shepard turned and looked at the slowly drifting white brides. What she wouldn't _give_ for a bottle of whiskey on a distant beach somewhere right about now.

"Ain't no rest for the wicked," she grumped to herself. She could do nothing about the beach at the moment, but at least she could do something about the whiskey.


	56. Chapter 56

At first, Eír did not notice the looks, her mind focused on her errand. As she moved deeper into the colony, however, they were inescapable. Every batarian she passed seemed to stare at her, some expressionlessly but most with a scowl or a stern frown. As she slowly realized what was going on, she grew more and more self-conscious, her head at first ducking sheepishly under the weight. As she went on, however, her resolve seemed to harden, her head lifting and her jaw tensing. As she neared the training compound, she was pointedly meeting each gaze cast her way until the caster turned away first.

By the time she was ushered in to the training grounds and her eyes landed on Shrive, she was simmering with anger.

Shrive's smile as she caught sight of her faded a bit as she took in the expression on her face. Walking over, she lightly took her arm, steering her into her tiny little office. "Eír, sweetie, what's wrong?"

Eír set the small lunch she'd brought on Shrive's desk, glaring toward the door as if the expression could be aimed at every batarian she had passed this morning.

"They look at me like I'm some kind of monster," she snapped. "Glaring in judgment, silently thinking me a murderer!"

"Oh, Eír…"

She turned her lavender eyes back to her love, a faint lip tremble punctuating the expression. "I'm not a _murderer_, Shrive! That man broke into _our_ house!"

"I know," Shrive soothed softly, taking her arms.

"He attacked me _first_! He wanted to hurt me, what was I _supposed_ to do?"

"I know," Shrive repeated, drawing her in to a hug. "You did the exact right thing, sweetie. The absolute right thing. Shh."

"Then why do they treat me as if _I_ am the criminal?" Eír demanded into her shoulder, her brows creased tightly even as she held the other girl. She sniffled faintly, then shook her head. "I do not like it here anymore, Shrive. I do not want to stay here anymore."

"Eír, this is our _home_," Shrive murmured softly.

"We can find a _new_ home!" Eír urged angrily.

"I am in a solar year contract, Eír," Shrive reminded her, drawing back enough to look into her eyes. "I made a commitment, a promise to Teful-"

"That means more to you than _I_ do?" Eír demanded, aghast.

"No! Of _course_ it doesn't, but…sweetie, we-…why don't we talk about this tonight, ok? We'll discuss everything…figure out what to do tonight. All right?"

Softly she stroked a hand over the younger girl's crest, and Eír sniffled again, lowering her head and backhanding tears from her cheek as she nodded almost sheepishly.

"I'm sorry, Shrive," she mumbled dejectedly. "I messed everything up for us, didn't I?"

"You did no such thing," Shrive said firmly. "As you said, that man attacked _you_. It was not your fault, only _his_ blind prejudice. You did not mess anything up."

Though Eír nodded again, Shrive could tell she remained unconvinced. Dipping her head a little, she sought out Eír's lavender gaze. "Hey…I still have that good news for you, remember?"

She was referring to the reason she'd asked Eír to come meet her at work for lunch to begin with. With the glares on the street, Eír had completely forgotten.

She bobbed her head, a faint smile finally appearing. "Yes…what is it?"

"Dr. Solus left me a message," Shrive said, taking her hand and steering her over to the desk to sit down. "He finished the research on your brain scan. He says it's just mental conditioning imprinted by the tank. With some therapy, you won't hate Shepard any more…won't want to kill her."

Eír was surprised at the shiver that passed through her at those words. It felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off of her. To be free of Gellian's grieving hatred…to have these shackles binding her to this fury that didn't belong to her removed…she could scarcely fathom it. Her lashes fluttered once, then she snatched hold of Shrive's hands as if they would save her from tumbling off a cliff.

"_Really_?" she asked, tears heating her eyes. "I can…this can be _gone_?"

"So says Dr. Solus," Shrive smiled at Eír's reaction. When she'd first read Mordin's message her reaction had been much the same…an overwhelming relief, a glimmer of hope. Eír may have loved Gellian, but no child should carry around the burdens of their parents, especially not in such a visceral way.

Eír actually let out a squeak of pure joy, flinging her arms around Shrive and hugging her tightly. Gone was her concern about the glaring batarians, any thoughts of anger completely banished. Free…she could be free! She had her Shrive, she could forge a relationship with her sister, make her _own_ destiny. With so much light suddenly surrounding her, that small shadow of upset melted away like ice in the sun. She was _free_! What more could she ask for?

* * *

><p><em>It was amazing<em>, Del thought, _how __**small**__ we all really are_.

Like most who made their living or their home in space, she had found it all too easy to take it for granted, to actually forget its wonders and its sheer _size_. Then a moment like this one happened, where she looked out and felt a renewal of that awe, that scope…that humbling power of emptiness.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Samara, looking out onto the void, Shepard felt diminished down to nothing, a single grain of sand on a beach so vast it covered all of eternity. Lowering her eyes a moment, her hand slipped up and gently rested on the Justicar's shoulder. At the touch, Samara's grey eyes shifted away from the stars and regarded the human woman.

"It is a path I long ago accepted, Shepard," she said in a low, even voice. "It is my burden to bear and heavy as it is, it has been a companion for so long I have forgotten how it feels to be free of its weight."

"Still, your own _daughter_," Shepard murmured, then self-consciously removed her hand. She looked back at the window, trying to fathom everything the woman had just told her.

A fugitive daughter, some kind of genetic mutation…a true predator, a remorseless killer, her weapon deadly seduction. She was the reason Samara had become a Justicar. She was the one she had been pursuing on Ilium, when Shepard had met up with her.

"Omega?" she asked, glancing once more at the older asari.

"I am certain, Commander," Samara replied. She sounded so damn calm, so damned _resolved_. Shepard still couldn't picture herself as a parent, but she didn't imagine that if she were one, and if she was faced with this in her own child, that she would be handling it so gracefully.

"We can be there in a few hours. I'll tell Joker to point our nose that way."

"I appreciate this," Samara stated. "It means more to me than I can say."

"Are…are you sure you don't want _me_ to just…_do this_?" Shepard offered, her brows knitting.

"She is _my _daughter, Shepard. This is my task. I ushered her force into this world, and I must be the one to grant that force peace in the next."

Shepard wiped a hand over her face, then nodded. Unable to think of anything to say, words pointless and inadequate, she turned and walked out. Directing Joker on their course change she headed up to the Nest, passing through to her gym even as she spoke up.

"EDI, can you send Grunt up to my gym, please?"

"Of course, Shepard. Joker would like me to inform you our ETA to Omega is four hours and fifteen minutes."

"Understood, thank you."

As she strode into the gym, she pulled off her t-shirt, baring the tank top underneath it. Tossing the shirt toward the bench, she regarded the boxing gloves hanging from their hook on the wall, then shook her head. Much as she really wanted to punch the shit out of her sandbag right now Chakwas's warning had rung loud and clear. It wasn't worth rebreaking her fingers.

A moment later, the door slid open. Glancing over, she nodded at Grunt as he shadowed the doorway.

"You wanted me?" he asked, looking around the room. It was the first time he had ever been in there. He spotted the wooden sparring weapons on the wall rack, as well as Shepard's actual katana which hung nearby. From there, he contemplated the weights, the small mats, the pull-up bar, the treadmill.

"This is what humans do to get into shape?" he asked with a grimace as his eyes landed on Shepard again. "Hit bags? Lift bars with metal? Run in place? Why not go out and pick a _real_ fight? Run on _real_ dirt?"

"Not always easy to do aboard a ship, Grunt," Shepard pointed out. "Besides, I'm _about_ to pick a real fight."

She gestured at him meaningfully, her expression inscrutable. He straightened slightly.

"You want to fight _me_?" he asked. "Why?"

"You shot me in the goddamn head, Grunt. Figure I need to even the score."

He scowled, discomfited. "That was an accident," he protested.

"Yeah, a _dumb_ fucking accident, Grunt, but that doesn't change facts. Are you scared to fight me?"

"_No_," he barked, his scowl darkening even more.

"Then what's the problem? Are you a krogan or a fucking pyjak?"

"I'm _krogan_," he snarled, stalking forward a pace. Though he was not yet completely full grown, he towered over the human woman, a wall of hard plate and thick muscle. His blue eyes narrowed into hers, and she looked up at him, challenging, no fear despite his superior size.

_Of course she's not afraid. Shepard's not afraid of __**anything**_, he thought. _She fought Wrex, a Battlemaster centuries older and larger than I. _

"Why are you doing this?" he demanded.

"Why did you shoot me?" she barked back, glaring.

"It was a mistake!"

"_Why did you shoot me_?" she repeated more firmly, stepping even closer, her posture threatening.

"I _didn't mean_ to shoot you, I was-"

"_**Why did you fucking shoot me, Grunt**_?" Shepard bellowed directly in the boy's face. Furious, the krogan roared.

"_**It was battle!**_" he bellowed back at her, their faces less than three inches apart. "_**It had you, Shepard! It was a threat! I had to put it down! I didn't think, I just shot!**_"

"That's goddamn _right,_" Shepard hissed. "You didn't think, Grunt! _You have to fucking __**think**_!"

Reaching up she slapped her left hand over his head. "You are krogan! You are _strong_, you are _fierce,_ you are _noble_, and you are _**not stupid**_! Are you?"

"No, Battlemaster," he growled.

"You keep your goddamn team _safe_, Grunt! _Be smart_! Use your environment! Use _all_ your weapons, even your brain, _you get me_?"

"I get you, Battlemaster," he rumbled back.

"So what did you do wrong?" she demanded.

"I didn't think."

"What should you have done?"

"I should have grabbed that drone and twisted his head off like a bottle cap!" He rumbled, starting to grin a little.

"_That's right_! And then what should you have done?"

"I should have spit down his neck!"

"_You're goddamn right!"_ Shepard barked, then grinned. "Now hit me!"

"_What?"_

"You heard me! This is a fight! I am your fucking Commander _and_ your Battlemaster, boy, now _fucking hit me!_"

White as bright as a supernova flashed in front of her eyes, a second before the pain rocketed through her jaw. Her head snapped back, drawing a vague ache from the remnants of her whiplash, and she slammed down to the ground. The white cleared and Shepard blinked, staring at Grunt who stared back down at her, both of them gaping. Tasting blood in her mouth, Shepard pursed her lips, turning her head, and spit a stream of crimson to the side before she looked at him again.

A grin appeared, and she started to laugh. His stance relaxing a bit, Grunt hmmed, then began to chuckle.

Shepard shook her head, still smiling as she tested her jaw. "That's my boy…"

* * *

><p>"It seems an odd way to comfort a boy," Samara murmured as she stood in the center of the Nest, watching Shepard check the bruise on her jaw in the mirror. "To berate him so vehemently and then goad him into striking you…"<p>

"A _krogan_ boy," Shepard reminded the Justicar. "Their philosophies are a bit…different."

"I have lived a long life, but I admit I have not had much direct interaction with the krogan," Samara stated.

"Well, I did the same thing any other Battlemaster would have done. Comforting Grunt, telling him he did nothing wrong…when he _knows _that he did…it would have made him feel coddled, weak. Krogan don't like to feel weak even on the best of days. So I verbally beat his mistake into his head. Shows I have confidence in him, that I think he's strong enough to take it, and that he's worth my time and effort to instruct."

"I see…and allowing him to hit you?"

"Shows how I see his potential. He's not a pup for me to put down, but one day will be as strong as I am…an equal."

"Does such an action not weaken you in his eyes? Allowing a subordinate to put their commander on the ground…does this not make you appear weak to him, in exchange for his appearance of strength?"

"Grunt knows better," Shepard told her, looking away from the mirror. "He saw me in a fist-fight with Urdnot Wrex, he's joined me in battle…he's _more _than aware of what I can do, and he respects it. He knows that the only reason he hit me is because I _allowed_ him to. I just hope the fucking bruise fades before Li asks how I got it."

Folding her arms, her expression went solemn as she changed the subject. "So. Morinth. Miranda found some intel?"

"Yes," Samara said, looking at the white brides drifting slowly in their tank a long moment before she turned her eyes back to Shepard. "Miranda and EDI were able to locate information about Morinth's latest victim…information that we can make use of."

"What do we have?"

"The girl's name was Nef. A sculptor, quite shy and reserved. This fits the pattern that I have seen from Morinth time and again. She is drawn to creativity, to those who stand apart from those around them. She met the girl in Afterlife…that may be her preferred hunting ground. Heavy music, dim light…it is easy to go unnoticed, to observe quietly until she spies her chosen prey. I believe I have a plan that will work for us."

"I'm all ears."

"It requires you taking something of a risk," Samara admitted quietly, "and I find I am…having some _difficulty_ asking it of you. I must remain out of sight. If Morinth even suspects that I am there, she will vanish like smoke, and I will not find her again for half a century or more. However we need to draw her into the light, lure her."

Shepard was far from stupid. She knew immediately where this was going, and folded her arms, pursing her lips thoughtfully. "You want to use me as bait," she murmured.

"You are precisely what Morinth hunts, Shepard. You are an artist…both musically and upon the battlefield. You stand apart from your peers. You have a fire. She will be drawn to you, I have no doubt of it."

Shaking her head, Shepard rubbed the back of her neck, planting her other hand on her hip. She blew out a breath. "This is our best shot?"

"I would not ask it of you if I thought otherwise," Samara affirmed. "I know the position I am putting you in, Shepard. You will be at risk every moment you are in her sights. She will not dare to act in the club itself but you must persuade her to take you somewhere private…her residence, or some other secluded area. The instant you are alone with her you will be in more danger than you have ever been before, even in the most desperate battle. She can not only seduce you, not only kill you…she can persuade you to commit atrocities…and you will _want_ to do them. You will want to obey her every command. Until I arrive not only your _life_, but your very essence, your _spirit_, will be in the gravest of peril."

Shepard grimaced, "That sounds like all _kinds_ of fun."

"As I said, I know what it is I ask of you, but this is the only way afforded us. If she is not stopped, Morinth will continue to murder and spread her evil…thousands of innocents may die. We must seize this chance."

Sighing, Shepard nodded. "All right. Ok, umm…let me get ready, get a few things together. I'll leave the docking area first, go across the plaza. I'll linger just outside the club, have a smoke or something…that'll give you time to get into position before I go in without someone tying the two of us together. If you want, Kasumi may even let you borrow her cloak."

"Thank you, but that will not be necessary. I have my own methods for remaining…invisible, as it were. I will await you at the airlock, and we shall follow your plan."

Stepping forward, Samara offered her hand, gently squeezing Shepard's when the human woman accepted it. "Thank you is not enough," the Justicar said quietly.

Shepard smiled a little. "Thank me when this is over and my brain is still in one piece. Go on. I have to get my things and I'll be right down."

* * *

><p>The large plaza in front of Afterlife was teeming, as usual. Barely anyone glanced at the human woman who ambled across it toward the club, weaving her way through passing bodies until she reached the stairs. Squinting at the doors a moment, she canted against the rail, tugging out a cigar and tucking it in her teeth.<p>

Drawing out her lighter, Shepard flipped it open and struck the wheel in a swift motion against her hip, touching the flame to the cigar and bringing the cherry to life. Snapping it shut again, she dropped it back into the pocket of her jeans, letting out a stream of smoke beneath her swagman as she adjusted the strap of the guitar case on her back.

She lingered several minutes, making the cigar last, pretending to watch the line of people waiting to get in. As usual, the elcor bouncer ignored her as she finally scrubbed the dregs of her smoke out against the bottom of her boot, flicking the spent butt vaguely in the direction of a waste unit even as she turned and headed up the stairs.

As before, the throbbing music of the club seemed to surround her. She was lashed with gaudy neon and packed bodies, and she forced her way through the crowd without pause, heading toward a far door.

A turian bouncer stood outside it, and eyed her as she came up.

"How about you let me in?" she greeted.

"Get lost. VIPs only."

"You don't think _I'm_ very important?" she smirked.

"No," he replied with dry bitterness. "I think the shit I took this morning is _more_ important, actually."

"I see." Shepard dug into her pocket, pulling out a credit chit and pressing it into his hand. "There's fifty thousand on that chit. How important am I _now_?"

He blinked at her, then plugged the chit into his omni-tool, pulling up the amount. He blinked again. "Uh…go right ahead ma'am," he said, and touched the DNA pad of the door.

"Much obliged," she grinned, tugging the brim of her swagman politely, before stepping past and inside.

The VIP lounge was a bit quieter than the outer club, a live band playing rather than the mechanically piped sensory that was so overwhelming in the rest of Afterlife.

Just exactly as she'd hoped.

She only had to linger near the stage a moment before the ragged old turian at the head of the band leaned over and smirked at her, tilting his chin in the direction of the case on her back. "That a guitar?"

"You know guitars?" she asked, genuinely impressed.

"I know every instrument made by the hand of every species across this galaxy," he chuckled. "Music is my _life_, baby-doll. How about you get up here and show us what you can do."

On occasion, during periods of shore leave both long and short, Shepard did nothing more than pick up her guitar and hunt down a dive with a band. More often than not, she managed to wheedle herself on stage to play right along with them. Sometimes they took some convincing. Other times, like this one, getting up on the flat wood was cake.

She played four songs with them, all but forgetting why she'd even come to the club to begin with as she lost herself in the pluck of the strings, the feel of the vibration, the endless, magical notes. The old turian (whose name turned out to be Jarif), was indeed a connoisseur of a wide variety of musical disciplines, and to her utter delight was even familiar with Flatwood.

She wanted to keep playing longer…tempted, in fact, to stay until the wee small…but she was here for a reason. After the fourth song she begged out, shaking hands with Jarif before stepping down.

Not ten minutes later, a cigar burning in her lips and a pool cue in hand, she was lining up a shot when someone drew up to the other side of the table. Wrinkling her brow a bit she only half glanced up at the figure leaning on the wall nearby, watching her, before returning her gaze to the holographic balls. That half glance was all she needed, however.

She had been a bit worried at first. There were several asari, dancers and patrons alike, wandering around the lounge. She had been afraid that when Morinth _did_ present herself, she wouldn't know for certain it was her…especially since the woman apparently changed names like she changed clothes.

That worry was laid to rest instantly with that glance. Not only was her silent observer asari…the family resemblance to Samara was unmistakable.

She said nothing, acknowledging the woman no more as she simply continued her game. She expected Morinth to say something but after several minutes had passed and she hadn't so much as moved, Shepard glowered and looked up at her again.

"You always stare at people?" she asked.

"Just the interesting ones," the asari said with amusement. Straightening from her lean, she moved up a foot or two to the edge of the table, the overhead light falling upon her face.

_Strike that, she could be Samara's fucking __**twin**__._

The asari placed her hands on the edge of the table, leaning on it. As she did, her fingertips interrupted the holographic sensors, and the balls began to fuzz and shimmer with interference.

Shepard cocked half of a lopsided grin around her stogie. "You're ruining my shot," she teased.

"Aw," Morinth tsked, then smiled like the slow simmer of oil. "Naughty me."

Slowly she drew her hands back, and the balls clarified. As Shepard took her shot, the asari inclined her head a little. "I do not think I've seen you around here before."

"Don't get to Omega much," Shepard replied, straightening. She drew her cigar from her mouth and ashed it in a tray.

"More's the pity," Morinth cooed.

Shepard gave her another smirk, nodding. "You might say that."

"Mind if I play?"

"Not at all. It's more fun with two anyway," Shepard agreed, resetting the table. The balls vanished, only to reappear in their beginning set. Morinth plucked another cue bracelet off the wall and slipped it on.

"Aren't most things?" the asari teased.

"Indeed," Shepard chuckled. "You are just full of double entendres aren't you?"

"Every girl has to have a hobby. We cannot all be talented musicians."

She indicated the guitar case tucked away under the table as she walked around toward Shepard, every step as graceful and deliberate as a panther.

"I don't know about talented," Shepard chuckled, then inclined her head. "But thank you."

She let Morinth take the first shot, keeping the conversation light but indulging it enough to, hopefully, keep the woman's interest. It was a fine line to walk. This was Morinth's lure…at least, to the _asari's_ mind. If Shepard pushed too hard or seemed too eager, she could give herself away, spook the woman into retreating. If she seemed too aloof, however, the asari might lose interest, which was just as bad.

She lied about most everything, of course: her name, her occupation, where she was from, what had happened to her eyes. As the night slowly wore on she allowed herself to indulge in a drink or two…beer, only, to keep her wits about her…and grew slightly more flirtatious. This seemed to please the asari, translating into subtle cues. She stood a bit closer. Let her hand brush over Del's wrist or upper arm when she laughed. Let her gaze linger a moment longer than normal whenever their eyes met.

Inside, Shepard felt like a goddamn dirty sleaze, her very guts cringing. Every laugh, every interaction felt like a betrayal to Liara.

_Jesus fuck, __**relax**__. So far it's just __**talking**__, for crying out loud. Besides, this woman is fucking __**dangerous**__. She's a murderer. It's not like you're going to run off with her or something…it's all a sham._

Their drinks ran dry, and she used going to the bar to fetch another couple of beers as an excuse to break free for a moment, center her head. She'd only had two so far, hardly enough to even give her a buzz, let alone make her anywhere close to being drunk, but she still felt slightly unbalanced, eager to steady her feet.

Crowding up to the bar she put in her order, closing her eyes a moment as she waited for the bartender to deliver.

"Look, just stop, ok? I'm not a whore you moron, I'm a dancer."

Shepard's ears pricked and she lifted her head, glancing around. Only a couple of feet away, one of the asari dancers was being harassed by a pair of turian hoodlums. The girl looked irritated but she also looked a little scared, and it was clear they weren't backing off, despite her rejections.

If there were two things in the galaxy Shepard absolutely hated, it was slavers and bullies. The asari was constrained by her job, unable to use her biotics to make a scene for risk of being fired…and the turians knew it. Forgetting about Morinth for a moment, Shepard's instincts took over.

Pushing away from the bar she strode over to the trio, taking a quick step and a turn to put herself in between the two men and the dancer. "You two fuckers not understand galactic? She said 'no'."

"Who the fuck are _you_?" one of the men demanded.

"Someone who's only going to ask nicely _one more time_," Shepard warned. "Go away and leave her alone."

"Get out of the way, stupid human."

The second turian, disgust in his voice, made the mistake of stepping forward, sweeping an arm out to brush Shepard aside.

Shepard was _not_ one to be brushed aside.

In a lightning motion, she snatched his wrist with one hand, clamping her other over his elbow and wrenching, even as she turned. Off balance the turian stumbled along with her, his feet skipping out from under him as Shepard threw him aside. He fell to the ground, knocking more than one person back as he did so.

She had not forgotten about his compatriot, of course. Even as she spun toward the other turian, she was lifting a blocking arm. Her left wrist caught his forearm, knocking his punch aside before she drove her right fist into his gut. At the same instant, she remembered Helen's warning about hitting things. Heat flared through her fingers as it impacted his stomach and she grit her teeth.

As was usually the case in these situations, the turians had more than a few friends, and in seconds it was an all out brawl. A seasoned veteran of more than a few bar fights, if it weren't for her hand Shepard would have been laughing and thoroughly enjoying herself.

Kasumi had still been helping her, not just on the sword-work but various martial arts as well. Shepard was still and always would be a boxer, but her weeks of the thief's training shone through. Always fast and with her own rough sort of grace, Kasumi's instruction had simply polished it. Shepard strode through the rumbling crowd like a dancer…not ballet, perhaps, but a dancer nonetheless. After a moment, despite the increasing pain in her doubtlessly re-broken hand, she _was_ laughing.

A whirl, and she blocked a punch, step, elbow to kidney, and the turian went down. Another step, a spin, a plate vanished off of a table only to crash into a human man's face as he tried to grab her, sending him reeling back. Continuing the motion, she ducked low, her booted foot swinging up and cracking a jaw.

There was a momentary lull. Most of the patrons had retreated, a few bouncers had appeared and were subduing a couple of idiot drunks on the fringes who probably didn't even know why they'd joined the fight. Half a dozen forms lay groaning or unconscious on the ground, but Del wasn't done yet. She was face to face with three more opponents…another turian, female this time, and two human men. The turian female had a knife, the men with fists tucked up near their faces as they eyed her.

Del cast the trio a charming smile, snapping her heels together and bowing low at the waist, her hands pressed, palms together, in front of her lips.

"Shall we?" she asked, as she straightened.

The smart thing would have been for them all to rush her at once. Not that it would have made much of a difference against a well-trained N7 marine, but still. Instead, it was the turian who darted forward first, her knife flashing out. A loud crack punctuated the woman's arm breaking, a foot to the hip sending her reeling to the ground. One of the men had darted in and Shepard swung the knife she'd ripped from the turian's grip, the blunt handle coming in sharp contact with his temple. He folded.

The third man, balanced on his toes, looked gray and a little less confident. Shepard smiled that dangerous, switch-blade smile, and beckoned him on. With a moment's thought, he proved he was not as stupid as he appeared, turning and swiftly retreating.

"Hey, that's enough of that! Get your things and get the fuck out of here!" A bouncer snarled as he stepped forward, gesturing threateningly. Perfect timing, of course. Shepard knew better than to push things, and gave a commiserating incline of her head before she turned, stepping over an unconscious form as she headed back toward the pool table to get her guitar.

She noticed instantly that Morinth was gone, and her gut sank.

"Hey…thank you," the dancer timidly approached as Shepard stooped and fetched the instrument, swinging it over her back. "Security was asleep."

Del gave her a faint smile and tugged the edge of her hat slightly with a nod. "My pleasure, ma'am," she replied. "Sorry about all the mess."

"Oh, don't worry about it. It happens twice a week around this place," she shrugged. "They'll ban those idiots but considering you were just defending an employee they'll only keep you out for tonight, let you back in tomorrow. If…that is, you _wanted_ to come back, I mean…"

The girl seemed flustered, and Shepard blinked, straightening a little as the asari gave her a bashful little grin.

"Thank you," Shepard replied, "You're sweet, but I'm otherwise spoken for."

"Oh." Now the poor girl looked both flustered _and _crestfallen. "Of…of course, I saw you talking to her earlier. I just…well, never mind. Thank you again, and if…well, I mean…just…good night."

She walked quickly away and Shepard shook her head. The girl probably wasn't a day over a century. A dancer or not, she was a lot like Liara had been when they first met…sweetly shy, easily tripping on her own tongue.

Sighing, she turned her mind back on her failure as she headed for the door, the bouncers eyeing her sternly. Her interference had helped that girl, sure, but it had _also_ lost her Morinth. More, Samara had likely seen the whole debacle and would know it was Shepard's stupid temper that had snatched away her chance to finally stop this Ardat-Yakshi.

_Not to mention, if she kills again, it's on __**my**__ head. Damn it, Del, you are a fucking class-A moron!_

Crossing the main club floor and emerging onto the outer stairs, she descended them, mentally cursing herself with every step…until she looked up and saw Morinth lingering at the bottom. She slowed, blinking, unable to believe her good fortune. Quickly she composed herself, lifting a brow as she drew down the last couple of stairs and slowed.

"I thought you'd skipped out on me," she said with a half smile. "Sorry about that mess-"

"_Sorry_?" Morinth asked incredulously, stepping close…_very_ close. Her hands slid around Del's waist as she moved flush to her, that simmering smile back on her lips. "That was _exquisite_, darling. The way you flowed through them, grace and violence and dark…_pulses_."

The final word rode on a faint breath that brushed over Del's ear as the asari leaned in especially close. For a moment, Shepard felt dizzy again, her eyes drifting involuntarily closed, her breath catching faintly in her throat. The vaguest touch of a smile turned the corners of her lips.

"Glad you approve," she whispered back.

"My apartment isn't far from here," Morinth murmured, her lips drifting over Del's cheek with the barest touch. "I want you…_alone_."

She stepped back, her hand catching in Shepard's, clinging to it as she turned and drew the human woman out toward the plaza. Fortunately, it was not Del's broken hand she gripped, though even that throbbing ache seemed strangely dim and distant as the commander wordlessly allowed herself to be led.


	57. Chapter 57

A/N: Hey, all you wonderful people Sorry about the brief disappearance. I tore some scar tissue from the surgery and ended up at home and off my feet all weekend. I am back now and ready to rock!

Just a few notes for this chapter:

Morinth will not be offering to join Del in her mother's place. That's part of the game that always puzzled me (and maybe out of my own stupidity, misrememberance, or misunderstanding)…but I could never quite grok why Morinth would make such an offer. She clearly does not know who Shepard is as she doesn't recognize her during her seduction. She knows nothing about her mission against the Collectors. She honestly doesn't even have concrete proof Samara and Shepard even know each other. For all she's aware, Samara caught sight of her by accident and followed her home. Even if she suspects the pair are acquainted (such as in the cases where you can choose the paragon/renegade options that allow Shepard to resist her thrall) to her mind it would be more likely that Shepard was working for Samara, employed as bait.

In any case, her declaration to Shepard that she is as strong as her mother and her offer to join her mission make no sense if she doesn't know there is a mission or that Shepard is the one employing Samara, not the other way around.

So…yeah. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

* * *

><p>A stream of cold water flowed from the back of the sink, spilling over Del's bruised and aching right hand. Her fingers had swollen, the whole appendage an angry, accusing red.<p>

She was going to hear no end of this from Chakwas.

As the pain started to numb a bit from the cold, she switched the water off and gingerly dried it.

Warmth and softness pressed to her back, seeming to bring with it that faint surge of unsteadiness again, as if the world around her had canted to one side, ever so slightly. Morinth, a field dressing in hand, reached out and wordlessly took her wrist, gently turning her. "Here…this will help," she cooed.

Shepard simply stood, silently watching the woman's face as the asari wrapped the stiff bandage around her hand and fingers. The dressing was soaked in a thin anti-inflammatory medi-gel and a light painkiller that immediately numbed her hand far more efficiently than the cold water had.

Shepard barely felt it. She was staring at Morinth.

_Almost completely identical…the same sweep to her cheekbones and jaw, the same color eyes…everything_.

She had not known a mother and daughter asari could so strongly resemble each other. Morinth had the same commanding grace as her mother did, the same classy allure that had made Del so self-conscious during her and Samara's initial meeting. In her heart, of course, Del was devoted to Liara but she was still human, and could appreciate beauty.

In fact, given her childhood and how long it had taken her to even know beauty _existed_, she probably appreciated it more than most people, coveting the small pieces that she found, collecting and hoarding them jealously.

"There," the asari murmured softly, letting her fingers sweep softly over the bandage as she finished. As her fingertips swept past the edge of the dressing and over the skin on Del's forearm, Shepard cleared her throat awkwardly, struggling to get a handle on herself.

She forced herself to take a step backward, putting a little distance between them. "Thank you," she said, then turned and walked a few feet away, rubbing her neck a bit as she contemplated the apartment. "Uh…nice place. You decorate?"

The throaty chuckle behind her sent prickles down Shepard's spine, and for a moment, she could feel the woman breathing on her ear again, though she was still standing feet away.

_She can not only seduce you, not only kill you…she can persuade you to commit atrocities…and you will want to do them. You will want to obey her every command. Until I arrive not only your life, but your very essence, your spirit, will be in the gravest of peril._

Shepard closed her eyes briefly. Her gut was warning her but even that felt dim and distant.

_No, I'm stronger than this. I'm stronger than she is…_

"I did," Morinth replied. Shepard's eyes snapped open as she felt the woman's hand slide over her shoulders, not having even heard her cross the floor. "Come, why don't we make ourselves comfortable?"

Taking Shepard's good hand again, she drew her over to sit down on the sofa. Knowing it had to be only a matter of moments before Samara arrived, Shepard simply screwed down her determination and held fast to it. Morinth seated herself close, her posture turned to face the human woman.

"How is your hand?" Morinth asked.

"Better now, thank you," Shepard replied, feeling more centered. "Was a damn stupid mistake…"

"You moved like a warrior," Morinth approved. "Like wrath embodied."

"I uh…don't know about _that_," Shepard gave a feeble smile. "I've just been in a few bar fights before, that's all. I have a bit of a temper. You…uh…you like fighters?"

"Passion, violence, power…it's all so primal, don't you think? Like a drum-beat, the pulse of your heart…the galaxy likes to pretend it's so civilized. Such a _lie_. I am attracted to…_honesty_."

"What is honest?" Shepard asked, feeling off-center once again. A flush, as if she had a low fever, was spreading over her skin.

_She's so beautiful…a goddess…_

_Goddamnit, Del! Stop that! She's trying to get into your head!_

Morinth had slipped closer, her fingertips trailing molten heat over Shepard's cheek before they slipped through locks of ebony hair. She twirled these as if fascinated with their texture.

"_Power_ is what is honest," she answered softly. "Those who do not deny their nature, their impulses. The weak lie to themselves, pretend all is safe and peaceful. People like you and I know better."

"Know better…"Shepard heard herself languidly murmur. Morinth smiled ever so slightly.

"Shh, darling…I think the time for talking is over, don't you?"

The slight unsteadiness, the faint allure…all of that was nothing compared to what happened next. As Morinth leaned even closer, Shepard felt as if her inner self was lifted up into the air, whirled around in a riot of color and whispering voices. All thought was banished save one…Morinth. _Anything_ to please Morinth.

There was no _Normandy_. There was no crew, no mission, no Liara…no _Del_. She was nothing any more but raging, mindless desire…desire to kill, to tear apart, to merge, so long as it was at this woman's behest.

Yet, this was only the beginning, only the asari's first touches as she closed her claws around her prey. Shepard was barely aware of the fingers that threaded deeper into her hair, of the lips that suddenly closed upon hers. As Morinth's eyes, unseen behind their now closed lids, shifted to black that tempest of madness within began to gain strength.

Then, deep inside, some tiny instinctual desperation…the same desperation that had been forged in the Room, the same desperation that had pushed her time and time again through impossible odds…made one last frantic pulse.

_Survive._

Hands thrust forward, sending the asari woman crashing to the ground, tearing her lips away from the human commander's. So startled was Morinth by the unprecedented action that her connection was broken. Reality rushed sickeningly back into Shepard's head, making her mind spin.

Shepard tried to rise from the couch but her legs refused to hold her. Weakly, she half tumbled to her knees, the tips of her broken fingers brushing over a cushion as she caught herself. She felt drained, washed out.

"How did you do that?" Morinth gasped a breath before she recovered her wits. Her face hardened, blue sparks starting to light around her hands as she began to surge forward, determined to make her kill.

She hit a wall of biotics, the pulsing wave slamming her back off her feet and sending her crashing against the wall.

Samara had arrived.

Her stomach roiling, the vertigo in her head making the room rock and lean like the bow of a storm-lashed ship on the ocean, Shepard tried to get back up and once again stumbled down. Gripping the arm of the sofa she grit her teeth, looking up as Samara strode past, her uplifted hand keeping her daughter pinned.

"Mother…" Morinth snarled, struggling against the power holding her, her eyes narrowing.

"You have no right to call me that!" Samara retorted.

"You cannot change what _is_!" Morinth wailed, gathering up her strength. There was a brilliant flash, a concussive wave of biotics sweeping toward the justicar. It knocked the shaky Shepard back off her feet even as she finally regained them, throwing her to the floor even as Samara stumbled backward.

In an instant, it was an all out melee as the two powerful asari engaged. The air crackled and lanced with dark energy, art tearing off the walls, furniture lifting as each woman tried to gain the advantage over her opponent.

It was clear, even to the dazed Shepard, that they were evenly matched. Ignored, she managed to get back to her feet, her head clearing even more as her legs seemed to steady. A footstool swept past her face, narrowly missing her.

Then things calmed slightly. Morinth and Samara grit their teeth, both having managed to catch the other tightly in the grip of their biotics. Neither could break free from the other, nor did they dare to release their opponent.

"I just want to _live_, Mother!" Morinth spat. "Like any other person in this galaxy! What right have you or anyone else to take that away?"

"Like you take the lives of others?" Samara responded. "You made your choice, Morinth!"

"They were _weak_! I am strong! I _deserve_ to live!"

Wiping a hand under her nose, Shepard strode on a weaving course over to the pair, ignoring the way the dry, snapping static of their biotics danced over her arms, tingling madly over her skin.

"You're _not_ strong," the human woman growled, even as she lifted her foot and slammed it against Morinth's hip. The blow sent her careening off-balance, her eyes wide as she stumbled to the ground, losing her hold on Samara.

Instantly the justicar was advancing, sweeping her daughter up in a web of sapphire light and lifting her high. Their eyes met a moment, and Morinth gave a terrified, weak little shake of her head.

"Don't-"

"I love you," Samara murmured, before she whipped her hand to the side. Morinth sailed with bone-crushing force into the wall, head first. There was an audible crack as both her neck and her skull gave in, her limp body falling to the ground.

The static in the room died along with the biotics, a stillness settling over everything like a blanket. Shepard was aware of her own pulse pounding faintly in her ears.

"Are you all right?" Samara asked, and Shepard turned to look at her, stunned.

"You're worried about _me_?" she asked, shocked. The woman had just been forced to murder her own _daughter_…and she was concerned about Shepard?

"I was afraid I had not made it in time," Samara said quietly. "I was…it is shameful to admit, but there was a moment where I lost track of you. It delayed my arrival. You…you could have suffered greatly because of my mistake."

"The last thing you should be worrying about right now is _me_," Shepard stated, her eyes falling on Morinth's crumpled body. Samara's gaze followed the human, her normally stoic posture seeming to sag a little, ever so slightly…a vulnerability that Shepard had no doubt the justicar did not often display.

Ignoring her still faintly trembling legs, she reached out and lightly took the asari's arm, giving it a gentle tug. "C'mon, let's get you out of here," she said softly. Samara did not resist, turning and walking toward the door. Shepard paused only to pick up her guitar case, carefully swinging it over her shoulder again.

* * *

><p>"You have an electrolyte imbalance," Chakwas reported, sounding both terse and impatient. She had not bothered to lecture Shepard about her newly broken hand, wordlessly stripping off the field bandage and setting about treating it…but her tight jaw and thin lips betrayed her displeasure.<p>

The fractures were, of course, worse than they had been before. After taking care of the hand, Chakwas had done a full scan on the commander, and now was shaking her head at the results.

"Normally I only see this kind of imbalance in biotics."

"Well, the biotics were flying quite…_liberally_," Shepard mumbled.

"Being exposed to another's biotics does not cause this, only wielding them," Helen shook her head. "Since I doubt you've spontaneously become a biotic there must be another cause I'm not seeing. Can you tell me anything else about what happened?"

Shepard said nothing, only shook her head slightly. She hadn't told Helen about what had happened in too much detail, only that she and Samara had gotten into an altercation with another powerful asari. No one besides Shepard knew the truth about Morinth…or her relationship with the justicar. Del could only assume this imbalance had come about during Morinth's attempts at mentally overwhelming her.

Helen knew that she was keeping something back, and the doctor was less than happy about it. Almost angrily she let out a sigh, snapping open a nearby cooler and tossing Shepard a juice pack. "Fine then. Drink that, and another with dinner. I want to test your levels again in twenty four hours, make sure you've recovered from your 'mysterious mishap'."

"Helen…"

"I'm your _doctor_, Shepard. I cannot do my job in treating you if you withhold vital information from me."

"I know," Shepard replied, then sighed. "I will check back in tomorrow. Am I good to go?"

_Goddamn her and her stubbornness_, Chakwas thought, then gave a sharp nod. "Go on. If you experience anything untoward, however, I want you right back here. _Ma shang_, as you are so fond of saying."

"Understood," Shepard agreed, getting to her feet and heading for the door, the juice pouch in her hand.

"And _do not_ hit anything with that hand again, for at least _three days_!" Chakwas barked after her. "Or next time I'll just let it _stay_ broken."

* * *

><p>Though she had already been there for twenty-four hours, Liara still felt a bit of wonderment as she walked through the Thanatos base toward the lift, trailing after Conroy.<p>

Built just under the skin of a moon called Folsberg, the base (nicknamed the 'Folly' by its inhabitants, tongue-firmly-in-cheek) extended nearly three miles underground. It seemed to be an endless bustle of activity as engineers, programmers, weapons-techs, and specialists of every stripe prepared for the arrival of the _Normandy_- an arrival which was just a few minutes away.

As the pair entered the lift, Liara couldn't help but fiddle at her tunic slightly, her brows knit. Noticing, Conroy gave a slight smile. "You ok, Doc?"

"I am fine," Liara replied, looking over at the human man. He was tall and handsome enough, but his skin was the pale, slightly yellow tone of one very ill…a sad fact only punctuated by the medical pack fastened to his back. Two clear tubes extended from it, one sinking permanently into his arm, delivering vital medications, the other tucked almost discreetly into his left nostril, providing supplemental oxygen.

Despite his condition, Conroy seemed eternally chipper, very charming and quite flirtatious…which had flustered Liara at first, before Sydney told her that he was the same way with anything that even remotely resembled a female.

At her words, Conroy smiled a little. He nodded and looked upward, as if he could see their destination through the roof of the lift. "Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing her again too," he teased lightly. Liara blinked, straightening a little.

"You have met Del? I thought you had only been with Thanatos company a few months-"

"I have been. Met her just before I joined up," he supplied, smiling at her. "We were on Omega, about to do a run for Archangel. She bummed a smoke off me, then knocked me unconscious as we started our jog across the bridge. To pay her back, I blew up a bunch of vorcha for her. It was fun."

"She knocked you out?" Liara asked, horrified.

"Well, she did it for my own good. I wasn't as sick as I am now, either…so don't worry, she wasn't roughing up invalids. She put me down easy instead of shooting me in the back. When I asked her later why, she said it was bad form to shoot someone who'd just given you a cigarette."

Liara shook her head in wonder, but couldn't help the small chuckle. "That sounds like Del," she agreed.

The lift drew to a halt and the doors parted, exposing a vast and bustling space. Sydney was striding toward them, a smile on her lips. "Just in time," she said as they stepped out, heading for her as well. "She's just dropping now."

A warning bell began to ring, forms clearing the center of the room as the ceiling seemed to iris open. The faint shimmer of an atmospheric barrier could be seen, maintaining the integrity of the room's environment. The trio watched as the _Normandy_ slowly lowered through the barrier, its struts extended. It eased to the dock floor as softly and gracefully as a flower petal coming to rest on a pillow, more than displaying Joker's deft hand.

As the frigate settled, the ceiling irised closed again.

They resumed their course forward as the airlock opened, disgorging several forms. Liara saw the engineers emerge, Tali in their number. Catching her quarian friend's hands she smiled at her before drawing her in for a hug.

"It is good to see you," she murmured happily.

"It's good to see you too, Liara," Tali replied, returning the hug tightly.

"I am so sorry, Tali…about everything that happened at the Flotilla-are you all right?"

"I know," Tali replied, drawing back a little as she looked at the asari. "It was…hard for a while and it will never really go away but...I-I am better."

"I am glad, and I am glad you are here," Liara replied. She, like Shepard, held a great deal of affection for the young quarian, and learning of the accusation of treason, the death of her father and her friend, had been difficult. With her so far away, Liara could not even be there to comfort her, and a message seemed so detached and clinical.

"Hey, save some hugs for me."

They turned as Shepard came out off the ship, a faint grin on her face. Liara smiled as the human opened her arms, then moved forward and embraced her.

"_Del,"_ she sighed happily, gripping her tightly. She drew back slightly, cupping her face and then blinking in surprised delight. "Your eyes!"

Gone were the red and gold synthetics. Now, warm and familiar dark brown peered back at her, a most welcome sight.

"Yeah," Shepard grinned. "Chakwas and Miranda did the surgery yesterday. They're still a little tender and they itch now and again but apparently that's normal for a few days."

Seeing someone approach, Shepard glanced past Liara's shoulder and blinked in surprise, loosening her arms.

"Hey, don't stop on _my _account," the man grinned, holding up his hands. "The only thing better than two beautiful women hugging is if they're hugging _me_."

"_Conroy?"_ Shepard blurted in shock.

"See, I knew my rugged manliness was imprinted indelibly upon your brain," he laughed. "It's good to see you again."

"Joseph works for Sydney now," Liara supplied. "He has been helping with small arms weapon schematics."

"Well, I'll be," Shepard murmured, then drew Liara a step or two to the side with her arm still around her waist, getting out of the way as more of the crew began to disembark. "You mean I have to put up with him for a whole _week_?"

Joseph feigned being wounded as Liara looked at her solemnly. "Yes, I am afraid so. However, you will also have to put up with _me_, so I hope that is some small consolation."

"Ouch," Joseph laughed, planting his hand over his chest. "Well, I'll leave you two alone. If you need me I'll just be in the armory, hanging myself."

He gave them a grin and a wink before striding off. As he left, Liara turned back to Del, one hand cupping her cheek lightly. "How have you been?" she asked softly, a note in her voice that concerned the commander.

"I'm fine," Shepard told her, becoming concerned at the look in the asari's eyes. "Few minor bumps and scrapes but…what's the matter?"

"I just…I have had this _feeling_ that something horrible had happened to you." Her cheeks darkened faintly and she looked down a little. "I am sorry, I am foolish. I am sure it is just the weight of this mission, knowing the dangers you might be going into, and…"

"It's all right, Liara," Shepard told her, ducking a little to meet her eyes. "Knowing you I'm sure you've been overworking yourself again as well, haven't you?"

Liara smiled softly. How she had missed those eyes! "If you are implying that I am a stubborn workaholic I would simply like to point out that I had a very good teacher, Commander."

"Oh, is that so, Dr. T'Soni," Shepard smirked. "Well, then it sounds like this week 'off' will be good for _both_ of us."

* * *

><p>Shepard had one rule she made adamantly clear, and Sydney had firmly passed it on to her people. With all the upgrades going on with the ship, there would be engineers and workers moving throughout, accessing every area and nearly every system.<p>

So, the rule was simple: No one touched EDI.

All but a very small handful would know that EDI was anything other than an advanced VI protocol that helped coordinate the ship's systems and warfare suites, but Shepard didn't want to take the risk of some asshat messing in the AI's 'mind'. The AI core would be completely locked down against access and EDI was more than willing to play 'Mindless VI'.

Joker was, himself, rather fed up with VIs. Shepard's electronic counterpart was still his faithful puppy, tied to his omni-tool. It was a source of much delight to the members of Thanatos, to see the pilot wandering around the complex with an amusing and rather vocal representation of Del dogging his heels.

"Driving your pilot insane seems like overkill to me," Sydney told Del, snapping buckles into place with expert ease. Liara stood nearby, arms outspread and a faintly bemused smile on her face.

"I am tempted to retain a copy of the VI myself," the asari murmured.

"Do that and I just may never speak to you again," Shepard huffed. She was kneeling at the asari's side, adjusting the target pack strap and securing it. Liara's bemused expression only grew, and she arched a brow as she looked down at the human woman.

"I think it is charming," she stated.

"Charming? It doesn't even _sound_ like me, it sounds like a chipmunk with a head-cold. Every other word out of its mouth is about asari or blowing shit up-"

"Sounds like you to me," Sydney joked, folding her arms with a shrug as Shepard finished securing Liara's target. The brunette glowered at her as she got to her feet, picking up her own target pack and slipping it on.

"Sorry, what was that, Syd? I couldn't hear you over the bullshit."

"It could be reprogrammed," Liara pointed out, watching as Del buckled up her straps. "Voice and manners. It would not be difficult to do so for someone who knows you."

"Don't you _dare_," Shepard warned, fixing her with a look. Liara's smile grew sly and Del's frown grew. "Liara, I mean it."

"So, Sydney," Liara said smoothly, ignoring Shepard as she glanced over at the smirking blonde. "It seems you are at a disadvantage. Two against one…this does not seem quite fair."

"Deeds will be here any moment," the blonde told her. "Honestly, it's _you two_ at the disadvantage. Del may be able to wipe the canvas with me when it comes to boxing but this is one thing she's _never _beaten me at, and you have never before played."

"I am a swift learner," Liara replied.

"You'll be fine," Shepard said, folding her arms. "Sydney likes to brag but it's all hot air."

"Oh, is it?" Sydney huffed.

"Usually it is," Deirdre agreed as she strode in, her face coy. "In _my_ experience, at least."

"See? I knew I'd like her. She agrees with me," Del smirked as Sydney shot her love a baleful look.

Shepard and Navis had met briefly the night before, shortly after the _Normandy_ had put down. She had seemed just as surprised as Liara had at learning of the relationship between the pair, and Liara had seen a vaguely hurt look in her love's eyes. Not at the idea that Sydney had moved on, of course, but that she had not shared the information.

"You're late, Navis," Sydney grumped with mock disapproval.

"Fashionably _on time_, thank you," Navis retorted. "Not that _you'd_ know anything about fashion."

The banter only continued as Navis strapped on her own target. Shaking her head with a chuckle, Shepard walked to the wall and took a ball off the rack, before pitching it rather forcefully at Sydney.

"If you two are _quite_ done," she smirked as the blonde startled at the impact, fumbling and barely managing to catch it before it fell. "This is my vacation and I'd really like to wipe the floor with you."

Liara had never played zero-gee ball before. A hybrid of touch football and baseball played in an anti-gravity environment, the game was remarkably simple and yet complex at the same time. That Sydney had a z-gee court on the Folly had made Shepard no end of giddy; she had not played since N7 training.

No biotics were allowed, of course. The walls were softly padded to prevent injury. The target packs strapped to their chest and back were designed to register 'tackles'…a touch of sufficient force would result in a flashing light and a low vibration.

She walked Liara through the rules before they began, but the young asari seemed to swiftly get the hang of it once the gravity had been turned off. Soon she was quite clearly enjoying it, throwing herself into the game with a dogged determination. Still, the blonde human woman and the older asari were vicious competitors, clearly not softening things down in favor of the newbie. Shepard and Li were hard-pressed from the get-go.

Still, though they were losing, the score was respectable as they neared the end of the game, all four women dripping with sweat. Sydney had the ball and had worked up quite a bit of speed. She tumbled over Liara's head as the archaeologist sailed in, and tagged the first base. The pad lit up and Syd careened off the wall, sailing for second. Shepard dodged Deirdre and snagged hold of Liara's hand, hitting the wall with her left arm and leg even as she hefted, sending the asari sailing for Sydney.

As Syd tagged second base and dove toward third, Liara swept by with only centimeters to spare. Her feet hit the wall, her legs coiling before sending her off again with a powerful shove. Just as the blonde neared third base, one hand outstretched to tag it, Liara slammed into her, tackling her off course. The human's target began to flash and buzz, and the pair bounced into the wall.

"Goddamnit!" Sydney huffed, tossing the ball aside as they recovered. She wiped her forehead, giving Liara a sideways smirk as the time buzzer went off. "Nice save, but we still won."

"Next time," Liara panted a promise, then laughed as Shepard swept in from above, catching her around the waist even as she kicked off from the wall, the pair spinning away across the room.

"That was brilliant!" Del grinned, hugging her tightly even as they whirled. "The Mets would kill to have someone like you on their team."

"The Mets would kill to have anyone who knows up from down on their team," Sydney scoffed with a laugh. "They wouldn't know talent if it bit them on the ass. The Raiders, however-"

"Don't you start in with the Raiders again," Shepard barked at her, scowling over Liara's shoulder. "Branson is a complete fucktard and Philips wouldn't know a Sling if he had a busted arm! No one on the Raiders holds a candle to Stremick-"

"Stremick again? _Really?_ Let me tell you about _Stremick's_ stats-"

Deirdre had reached the floor and had braced herself near the room controls. "You two might want to lower yourselves before you finish this pointless argument," she teased. "Otherwise I'm going to turn the gravity back on right now and let you crash."

"It's not a pointless argument," Del retorted. "Sydney just can't admit the Mets are better than the Raiders!"

"It's not _my_ fault you're completely wrong," Sydney replied, even as she moved toward the ground. As soon as the trio settled to a safe distance, Deirdre reinstated the gravity. The four women dropped solidly to their feet.

"I'm only 'completely wrong' because _you're_ delusional," Shepard pointed out, not missing a beat. Liara rolled her eyes slightly and then bent in, kissing her cheek.

"Delusional or not, we're the ones that won," Sydney pointed out, barking a laugh when Shepard flipped her off.

"You two are like a pair of children," Liara teased gently as Shepard refocused on her. Del gave one of her patented lopsided grins.

"I'm badly in need of a shower, Dr. T'Soni," she murmured meaningfully.

"As am I," Liara replied back. Taking Shepard's hand, she looked at the other two. "Thank you for the game. We shall have to play again before the _Normandy_ departs. Del and I need to…I believe the term is, 'even the score?'"

Sydney nodded, sketching a half bow. "Any time, Liara," she said. "Deeds and I would be more than honored to completely and utterly defeat you two again."

Shepard flipped her off again, giving her a shit-eating smile as the pair turned and walked out of the court.


	58. Chapter 58

"What is wrong?" Liara murmured in soft concern, warm water still cascading around the pair. They held one another tightly, the asari's forehead resting lightly against the human's tan shoulder. Even under the water, under the fresh smell of soap so recently applied, she could still note the ghost of the woman's cigars, as if the scent was indelibly etched into her skin.

"Nothing," Shepard mumbled. Even if Liara hadn't known better, the lie was more than unconvincing.

Little was truly hidden from a meld…especially a full Joining. However, being a happy and pleasurable experience, Joinings generally only pulled the more comforting and beautiful of one's memories to the fore. Even then, the memories were a swirl of dream-like chaos, only a half-seen and half-noted backdrop, overshadowed a bit by the more intent focus of purpose.

Sometimes, though, unpleasant memories would surface…moreso if they were especially powerful. These were sensed subconsciously, and could be completely closed off if the one to whom the memory belonged wished it.

Had there been no Prothean beacon, Liara would not have been privy to a lot of Del's darker memories when their relationship had evolved. The human's super-ego would have closed them off, sealed them away defensively. Liara would have been able to sense the barrier there, but both politeness and propriety would have prevented her attempting to penetrate it against Shepard's will.

With the beacon, however, the chaotic alien knowledge had forcefully pulled the memories to the surface, entwining them with the programmed visions until it was nearly impossible to view one without the other. Liara had been thrust starkly into the most painful corners of Shepard's past, the experiences ripped to the surface and laid bare.

Because of this, Shepard did not seal these off when they Joined. If one grew too close to the surface she would mentally bat it away again, preventing it from becoming too strongly focused, but she did not actively _hide_ them.

This was how Liara had learned of the kidnapping, the meat-hooks. The faintest, briefest glimpse of it before it was urged away again had been enough. Unconsciously registered, it had not moved to Liara's conscious mind until after they had separated from the Joining, and even then, it was only a vague knowledge, a shadow of realization...like the memory of a story once told in childhood.

This time, however…there had been a definitive barrier.

She had sensed it the night before, as well. She had vaguely touched it and felt the firm resistance. It had troubled and puzzled her but she had swiftly (and most expertly) been distracted from it moments later.

Now, she had sensed it again, an unyielding wall that masked what lurked behind. Only the most uncouth of asari would have even attempted to pry behind that barrier…an act that could be likened to rape for a human being…so Liara had naturally not pressed the issue mentally.

That did _not_, however, stop her from _asking_. In light of her past, the memory had to be most unpleasant indeed if Del sought to protect her from it. As well, Shepard's emotions had seemed hesitant, tentative, touched with guilt, even at the heights of their Joining.

All together, it left for a troubled and understandably concerned Liara.

"What has happened you do not wish me to know?" she asked gently, sliding her arms from around the human woman and lifting her hands to cup her face. Blue eyes looked into brown, a silent plea for trust, a reflection of love.

Shepard met that gaze only for a moment, before her own slipped away to the side. Ducking her head, she firmly kissed Liara's cheek before stepping past her and out of the shower.

_Now_ Liara was frightened.

Emerging herself, she dried and gathered her clothing, stepping into the bedroom proper. Shepard was standing near the bed, her back to the bathroom as she almost mechanically dressed in fresh clothes.

"Del…" Liara murmured, her voice soft worry.

"It's nothing, Liara-"

"If it were nothing, you would not feel the need to keep it from me," the asari replied quietly, pulling her clothing on.

"It's…done with, it's not important," Shepard said tersely, tugging her t-shirt on with a snap of her hand.

Wounded, Liara's brows knit as she looked at her. "You do not trust me…"

"You _know_ that's not true," Shepard replied, turning and looking at her.

Moving forward, Liara cupped her cheeks again, searching her face before resting her forehead against Shepard's. "Let me help you, Shepard," Liara whispered. "You have so many burdens already…you do not have to bear them alone."

* * *

><p>Shepard closed her eyes, her hands resting on Liara's shoulders as she waged an internal war. No matter how much they had shared, no matter how much Liara might know or understand about her, Shepard had spent so long closing everyone and everything else out that this was a true struggle. She knew that Liara would be upset, perhaps even furious…but to <em>not<em> tell her would hurt her, and she would only be more upset and angry when she eventually, inevitably, found out on her own.

Shepard had already been the cause of so much pain in Liara's life. The guilt of that weighed on her more heavily than the guilt of what she hadn't yet confessed.

Releasing the asari, she stepped back, turning around as she lifted one hand, raking her short nails over her scalp and fluffing her still damp hair a little.

"There…was an accident," she said at last, keeping her voice low and even and not even daring to look at Liara at first. She could feel the weight of the woman's gaze, could almost feel the acceptance in it. Liara truly thought there was nothing Shepard could tell her that would possibly change her feelings toward her.

_How long will that last? How far into this will I get before that turns into disbelief, into fury?_

She dared not pause too long. If she did she'd never get through this.

"He's just a boy," she defended, speaking almost to herself more than Liara. "Hotheaded, eager…he thought it was the right thing to do. He just didn't think."

"Are you talking about Grunt?" Liara asked softly. Shepard bobbed her head once, then felt her gut tighten even more. Her worries had been so wrapped up in telling Liara about Grunt's careless mishap, and about what had happened on Omega, that she had completely forgotten how Grunt's error had _occurred_…more specifically, that it had been while they were fleeing their lives from a trap the Illusive Man had let them stroll right into.

_This is going to be __**so**__ bad…_

Forcing herself to turn she looked at Liara. Shepard was many things, but she was not now nor had she ever been a coward. Even so, facing that one small asari scientist was harder than facing all the geth, Collectors, and Reapers the galaxy could throw at her.

"We…were lured onto a Collector ship," she said in a low voice. "We thought it was disabled. We had to take the chance that we could get valuable intel, maybe even find some of our people that had been taken. It was too good a chance to pass up…too good to be _true_."

Her tone turned bitter, and she made a helpless gesture. "It was a trap, of course. Got in easily enough but ended up in a hot run trying to get _out_ again, Collectors and husks dumping out of every goddamn crack…"

Her jaw tensed, her eyes going to flint as she glanced at a shifting wall screen that was displaying random works of art, as if the answers to the universe would appear on its surface. "The Illusive Man _knew_ it was a trap," she confessed. "He knew from the get-go and he let us waltz in anyway."

Liara straightened a little, eyes widening slightly. "He risked your life and the lives of your crew for…for some _intel_? I…" she broke off, shaking her head sharply. "I thought I would no longer be surprised by the depths to which that man is willing to sink."

"Yeah," Shepard scrubbed at her hair again, rubbing her neck before letting her hand drop to her side. "I was…well. To say I was a little _unhappy_ with him would be an understatement. We were so hard-pressed…Kasumi nearly _died_-"

"And Grunt?" Liara pressed lightly, meeting her eyes.

Shepard shifted back toward a nearby chair, sitting with a sigh and a weak slap of her hands on her thighs, a surrendering motion. "He…he just wasn't thinking. We were nearly to the shuttle when I was grabbed by one of the drones. Adrenaline was high, he just _reacted_…put a shot through the hostile's head. Unfortunately, _my _head was in the fire line."

Liara's eyes widened again, and she went pale. "H-he _shot_ you?"

As if it were unimportant Shepard flicked a finger at her forehead. "It just skipped off my helmet is all. Cracked the casing, dented it a bit…he'll never admit it but it scared the shit out of him when he realized what he'd done."

Liara put a hand over her mouth, still staring at her human love. An accident, yes…but mere fortune Shepard had not been killed. Her eyes closed and Del shook her head.

"I'm _all right_," she reassured intently. "Honestly, if he hadn't taken the shot we probably wouldn't have gotten out of there in time."

Liara paused a moment, eyes still closed, before she finally lowered her hand and opened them, stoic. "This is what you did not want to tell me?" she asked quietly.

Brown eyes shifted to the floor again. Del's palm stroked over her lips, rubbing with an agitated motion before she clasped her hands between her knees. "Some of it," she admitted.

"_Some_ of it?" Liara pressed. Her tone was still soft, but Shepard could hear the woman's upset hidden within it. Grunt's little accident was one thing…a mistake that Del had fortunately survived intact. The Illusive Man being involved in a Collector trap would be slightly more stinging, adding to the already simmering cauldron of anger toward the man hidden deep within Liara's chest. Alone, what Shepard had already told her was enough to make the asari angry. What she was about to say would undoubtedly push it over the brink.

Del took a deep breath, once more forcing herself to meet Liara's eyes. "The Justicar-…Samara. Don't…no one else knows this. She was reluctant enough to even tell _me_. She informed me that she had been pursuing her daughter for a few centuries, and had finally tracked her to Omega. She, ah…asked for my help to stop her and I…uh…_helped_."

Confusion shone plain in Liara's bright blue eyes. "I do not understand. Her daughter…was a fugitive? A criminal? And you helped her to apprehend her? Why would this be something to trouble you? It is sad that she was forced to track her own daughter, but-"

"She was an Ardat-Yakshi," Shepard said quickly. So quickly, in fact, that Liara could only blink a moment before the word registered.

"A-an _Ardat-Yakshi_?" Her tone was a gasping blend of horror and disbelief. "_Shepard_!"

"I know…"

"_Do you_?" Liara gaped. "You helped a Justicar track down an _Ardat-Yakshi_? The most _dangerous_ predator in the entire galaxy? Wh-why would you _do_ such a thing?"

At Liara's horror and budding fury Shepard automatically went on the defensive, resorting to her own one tried and true weapon…anger.

"The woman was a murderer, Liara! She had to be _stopped_-"

"So naturally _you_ had to be the one to stop her," Liara retorted bitterly, folding her arms. "The mighty Shepard, rushing to the rescue once again without thought-"

"Hey, now that's _not_ fair," Shepard glared, getting to her feet.

"Not _fair_?" Liara gasped. "Shepard, do you know what an Ardat-Yakshi can _do_? What she could have done to _you_ had she managed to touch your mind-"

The asari broke off at the expression on Shepard's face. After a tense moment of silence, Liara made a faintly strangled sound. "Shepard…"

"_Li-"_

"Tell me she did not actually touch your mind," Liara said in a thick, quiet voice, her face stone. "Tell me you were not so close to her that she was able to do so…"

Shepard said nothing. She didn't have to. Liara lowered her arms, a strange expression passing over her face before she turned away from the human woman. Shepard could see her hand trembling as she rest it on the back of a chair, as if to steady herself.

"Liara…" she murmured, taking a step forward.

"Get out."

The asari's voice was low and husky, tinged with ice. Shepard had never heard her speak that way before, and it chilled her.

"Tianl-"

"Get. _**Out**_." Liara repeated, through grit teeth, her voice now heat instead of ice. Her skin began to glimmer with biotics, faint traces of blue fire writhing over her flesh like snakes.

Jaw steeling, Shepard closed her mouth and wordlessly turned, striding out the door.

* * *

><p>"Shepard, are you all right?"<p>

"Aren't you supposed to be pretending to be a VI?" Shepard asked. She was sitting at a work bench in the armory, disassembling the new-gen assault rifle that Conroy had provided. She had taken it apart and put it back together four times already, her brown eyes focused with almost feverish intensity on her task. A half empty bottle of Jack sat nearby, remains of some half-dozen cigars overflowing a tiny tray. "What if someone hears you?"

"It is 0112, Shepard," EDI replied evenly. "The only work crews still on task are down in Engineering. There is no risk that we will be overheard. I repeat my inquiry…are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Shepard murmured, continuing about her task.

"Evidence suggest otherwise. Your alcohol consumption over the last forty-eight hours has more than quadrupled from your normal average. Though we are in dry-dock you have not left the ship at all in those two days. Liara has not entered the ship to visit-"

"This is none of your goddamn business, EDI," Shepard growled. The small blue globe hovering over the pad nearby fell silent, seeming to pulse in thought a moment before responding.

"Your mental and emotional well-being are necessary for the stability of the ship and crew. I am both. Logic dictates that it is, in fact, 'my business.'"

Shepard all but slammed the pieces of the rifle down on the work bench before planting her elbows, raking her fingers back through her dark hair. After a long moment she mumbled, "Liara is angry with me."

"You should purchase her some flowers," EDI stated matter-of-factly. Shepard lifted her head, blinking at the blue orb.

"I should _what_?"

"It is a human custom to purchase flowers as an appeasement in such a situation," EDI told her. "Until you do, I believe you are in what is termed as 'the dog house'."

Shepard stared at the orb, then sat back a little. "I'm _familiar_ with human custom," she said bitterly. "I think this is a bit too serious to be appeased with just flowers."

"Some chocolate, perhaps-"

"_EDI_…" Shepard warned.

"Is it serious enough to cause an end to your relationship?" EDI asked.

"God, I hope not," Shepard murmured with a heavy sigh.

"Logic would dictate that this needs to be discussed with Dr. T'Soni, and a solution to the problem formulated."

"It's not so cut and dried, EDI," Shepard told her.

"What is the cause of Dr. T'Soni's upset?"

"It's…it's just fucking _complicated_, all right?"

"I am sorry, Shepard. I am still trying to understand the subtleties of organic emotions. If you would like, I can attempt to change your emotional state through humor."

Shepard stared at the orb, and taking her silence as an affirmative, EDI said, "A turian, a salarian, and an asari walk into a bar-"

"Don't…just…just _don't_…" Shepard groaned, waving a dismissive hand.

"Joker has used this anecdote on numerous occasions," EDI replied. "It seems to serve quite well in improving his emotional state. So much so that he feels the need to share it with numerous crew members. Oddly enough, the recipient's emotional state does not seem nearly as improved as a result. Perhaps it is the act of telling the joke rather than receiving it that causes the positive response…"

"Jokes aren't going to fix this any more than goddamn flowers," Shepard snapped. Rising to her feet, she snatched hold of the neck of the bottle of Jack, and turned to leave the Armory.

"I am…_sorry_, Shepard," EDI stated. The commander drew to a halt, half looking over her shoulder.

"Thank you, EDI," Shepard murmured after a moment. "Thank you for…at least _trying_ to help."

* * *

><p>Despite being on the Folly, Liara was not completely cut off from her information network. With Feron's help, she had uncovered a great deal of information about the Ardat-Yakshi that had infiltrated Omega, including video surveillance footage.<p>

She had no media that captured the actual confrontation, of course. Morinth, as she called herself, was much too clever for that. She'd even altered the consoles in her rented apartment to prevent eavesdropping through a force-reverse feed.

However she could not control the public vid-cams that lined Omega's streets…nor could she control Aria's private security network.

T'Loak would probably not be happy to know that Liara had access to her security. In fact, her unhappiness, were she to discover it, would prompt a reaction likely to be in the realm of 'murderous'. The original Broker had protected himself well, however, and Liara held little fear that the connections, bugs, and program implants would suddenly be discovered _now_…let alone traced back to _her._

However they proved invaluable to the asari in pulling up the recorded security information from the night Shepard had gone to hunt the most vicious of prey.

Liara watched in grim-faced silence as she followed the human woman's path off the _Normandy_ and into the VIP lounge. She watched her bribe her way into the lounge, bluff her way up onto the stage. Switching camera angles, she briefly caught sight of the Ardat-Yakshi. She hid herself very cleverly, remaining all but invisible not only to those around her but to the camera feeds. Liara only got a glimpse now and again no matter what angle she switched to.

It wasn't until Morinth approached Del as she played pool that she became clear. Liara tried to force herself to remain detached, nothing but an observer, but it was more difficult than she imagined it would be as Shepard and the deadly asari interacted, flirting with one another. The closer Morinth drew to the human woman, increasing the rate of casual contact and all but exuding sex, the grimmer Liara's expression became.

Shepard had not merely been involved with aiding Samara to confront her daughter…she had actively acted as _bait_. Not content with _hunting _the Ardat-Yakshi, a dangerous enough prospect by itself, Shepard had put herself _willingly_ right into her grasp.

Liara was trembling as she watched the bar fight unfold, Morinth disappearing from the scene. Following the cameras as Del left the club she watched the 'reunion' at the base of the stairs. Her hand clenched into a fist when Morinth slipped intimately close to Shepard, murmuring in her ear before taking her hand and leading her away.

Once they went into the apartment Liara was only left to imagine what went on inside. Watching the front of the building, however, revealed that the justicar did not enter for several minutes…much longer than was safe.

_Not that there is any such thing as 'safe' when even __**seconds **__are being spent in the company of an Ardat-Yakshi._

When Samara and Shepard emerged shortly afterward, Liara could see from the unsteady, half-drunk way Shepard was walking that she had not escaped the incident even remotely unscathed.

With a sharp jab of her finger, Liara switched off the feed. Sweeping to her feet, her biotics lit unconsciously. Every fiber of her being wanted to lash out, to release this fury and pain. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, instead, she struggled herself back under control.

The blue light surrounding her slowly faded. Only when it had completely vanished did she turn and walk out of the room.

* * *

><p>Sydney swiped her golden hair back, gathering the mass into a tail and tying it back to keep it out of her face. As she finished, she heard the door slide open and turned, her eyes landing upon the brunette that entered.<p>

Walking over, the taller blonde reached out and lightly rested her hands on Del's shoulders, amber eyes meeting dark brown. Shepard's face was slightly flush, and Syd could smell the Jack on her breath.

"You are absolutely _sure_ you want to do this?" Sydney asked gently. "You look drunk. You might end up regretting it…"

"I'm not _that_ drunk," Shepard replied. "I'm…I'm sure. Just…well. Sorry I woke you up for this-"

"Are you kidding me?" Sydney smiled faintly. "After how long I've waited? You _know_ how much I've wanted to do this."

"Yeah," Del half smirked, then gave a faint shrug. "I figured if I waited I'd just end up talking myself out of it."

"Just so long as you promise not to hate me in the morning."

"I _already_ hate you, Rasler," Shepard replied, her tone amused but so weary the inflection was almost lost.

"Oh. Good then," Sydney teased back gently, then winked. "Then have I got something for _you_."

Turning away, she strode back over to where she had set a heavy case. Snapping it open as Shepard followed her and peered over her shoulder, Sydney smirked.

"You should feel honored. I haven't even done this on _myself_ yet."

"I take it this is something special then?"

"New tech. Li secured the schematic through her network and gave it to me as a thank-you. You'll be the first in the galaxy to try it out, Del. It'll be at least six more months before this hits the common market so you'll be way ahead of the curve."

"It's…safe though, right? Tested?"

"No, it'll kill you on contact," Sydney said with dry sarcasm. "Of _course_ I tested it!"

"All right. So…how is it different then?"

"Well, most kits nowadays have the same laser and computer guidance, though I always prefer to do the color work by hand, as you know. Letting the VI do it is like…well, like a guitar with an HI interface instead of real strings."

"I get you."

"_This_, however…it doesn't use _ink_. You see this?"

She lifted a rather large bottle from the case. Clear, it looked like it held water, though it shimmered slightly. Sydney's grin grew as Shepard regarded it. "Hideously crude when compared to your nanites, but cutting edge as far as the galaxy is concerned," the blonde touted. "This bottle holds a trillion tiny little microscopic holographic projectors suspended in a neutral medium. Each projector is color-coded via the needle interface _as_ its injected."

"So…it'll be _holographic_?" Shepard asked, eyes widening.

"Yes," Sydney beamed. "The projectors send their individual little images through the lower layer of the skin and form the image one infinitesimal dot at a time…the final product will look like its hovering just a millimeter below the surface."

As Shepard plucked the bottle from her hand, looking at it in wonder, Sydney continued to grin. "Del, you are about to have the galaxy's first _official_ holographic tattoo."

* * *

><p>Very few people were up and about at this hour, and those that were remained hard at work on the <em>Normandy<em>. It felt to Liara almost as if the entire station were deserted, leaving her with a lonely melancholy beneath the uncomfortable warmth of her anger and hurt.

One of the engineers that emerged from the _Normandy_ just as Liara approached it, informed her that Shepard was not on board and had not been for a few hours. The station's bland VI directed her to a small rec room off of the mess, and as she entered, Liara found Shepard was not alone.

A chair had been set up in the middle of the room…a strange sort of chair that allowed the seater to straddle it and lean forward over an inclined platform. Del was seated in this chair with her back toward the door, naked from the waist up, her arms folded under her head as her torso rested against the incline. Her yoga pants had been worked down low on her hips.

Sydney was planted on a stool beside her, her blonde hair pulled back and an intent look upon her face as she leaned close over Shepard's back, painstakingly passing a laser wand the size of a stylus over the other woman's skin.

Distracted by motion as Liara moved closer, Sydney half glanced at her with a squint, before she blinked and straightened, lowering the stylus.

"Oh, Li…hey. Didn't think you were still up," she greeted. "I'm nearly done. Just the perfectionist in me being picky about the shading."

Though she could not see Shepard's face from this vantage, the sudden tension that corded Shepard's shoulders was unmistakable. Despite this, the asari's attention was fixed with wonder, even her anger momentarily forgotten as she approached close enough to see Sydney's handiwork.

Liara, of course, knew what a tattoo was. Asari indulged them as well from time to time though not in quite the same manner as humans did. They were less apt to put cohesive 'pictures' upon their skin and leaned more toward abstract or even tribal designs that followed the natural flow of their bodies.

Even had the concept been utterly foreign to her, meeting Sydney and Jack both would have enlightened her to the practice long before now. It was not so much that Del was receiving one that rendered her momentarily speechless, but the tattoo _itself _that stole her tongue.

Not luminescent in and of itself, the image still seemed to somehow glimmer with light, shifting and flowing along the muscles, giving the impression that it was not imprinted _on_ the skin but somehow suspended just beneath it, emanating from deeper within.

It was some kind of an avian. Beautifully rendered, the image swept from Shepard's shoulder down the right half of her back. Caught as if it were just taking off in flight, its wings were curved in graceful sweeps toward the right, the pinion feathers following the slope of Shepard's outer shoulder and slightly onto her arm. Its tail began as the form reached the lower curve of her spine, several long and delicate feathers spreading on each side to the outer curve of her hips.

Each feather was incredibly detailed, not only in light and shadow but in color. Crimson and gold gave the impression almost of flames, each nuance of shade rippling and changing with every subtle shift of Shepard's body. The bird's eye was black and gleaming and _alive_ somehow, its beak open in a cry.

She had never seen a tattoo like this, and the beauty of it took her breath away a moment. It was only by the strongest of will that she did not reach out and trace her fingers over it.

"I take it by your face you approve," Sydney said after a moment of awkward silence, popping open a small pack of medi-gel. As she began to carefully slather the clear gel over the tattoo, the slightly angry flesh at its edges began to visibly soothe.

"It is beyond lovely, Sydney," Liara complimented. "How…how was this effect accomplished? It looks almost holographic-"

"It is," Sydney said, then caught sight of Shepard's face as the woman turned her head to peer at her. "Um…I can explain the nuances to you later if you want. For right now, I think you two probably need to talk. Ten minutes before you move or put your shirt back on, Del, all right? Otherwise it's going to be tender as all hell."

The brunette only half nodded, her hooded eyes watching as Sydney quickly powered her equipment down before beating a strategic retreat.

Shepard made no move to rise, remaining as she was save to shift her face up a little so she would not mumble into her upper arm. "Did you need something, Liara?" she asked neutrally.

"Yes," Liara replied, taking her eyes from the image on Del's back as the purpose of her visit returned to her. "I need to speak with you."

She carefully took up residence on the stool that Sydney had abandoned, folding her hands demurely in her lap. Unsure where to begin but knowing she had to speak before her emotions got the best of her again, Liara cleared her throat. "I am…words cannot express how…how _furious_ I am with you right now, Shepard."

"I know-"

"No. You do _not_._"_ Liara stated, more fire in her voice than either of them had expected. "I…before we met, I had never truly been close to anyone, Shepard. I had no real friends before coming aboard the _Normandy_, only colleagues, vague acquaintances. Perhaps that is reason that I feel so helpless now. I…I cling to you so tightly because you were the first hint of that closeness, that kinship, that I had ever felt. Now my grip is so tight it is tearing my heart apart, and I…I cannot continue this way, Shepard."

"Liara-"

"You left me, Shepard," Liara breathed, misery and accusation both clear in the words. "You left me, and since the moment that you have come back, it only seems as if you are trying your hardest to leave me _again_."

Ignoring what Sydney had said, Shepard pushed herself up, grabbing her shirt where it was hanging on the edge of the chair. Sitting back she hauled it on, ignoring the faint irritating burn as the cloth rubbed over still tender skin. In her emotion, Liara didn't even notice the odd leather cuff over Shepard's left wrist.

"Is that what you _think_?" Del demanded hotly as she got to her feet. "That I'm _indifferent_ to your feelings or just…just goddamn _suicidal?_"

"What am I to do, Shepard?" Liara retorted just as hotly, her blue eyes simmering. "Sit helpless in my hidden little fortress, worrying that somewhere out among the stars you are throwing yourself into a fist-fight with a krogan, charging head-long into a bullet, or entertaining an _Ardat-Yakshi_?"

"Hey, _you're_ the one that wanted to be the Shadow Broker!"

"_You_ are the one that wanted me _safe_!" Liara snapped back. "Is it wrong of me to want _you_ safe as well? Or am I to mourn you again so soon?"

Shepard's jaw flexed and she looked away, lips pressed into a thin line. Lowering her head a little, Liara spoke in a voice that was lower, softer, but no less upset. "I understand that you are a marine. That you must take risks. I understand that you have survived so much, Shepard…so much that would have destroyed anyone else. I understand all of that, but…but _this_. I do not know if I am strong enough to handle this anymore. I…I close my eyes and all I can see is you falling toward the mouth of a thresher maw, or collapsing against the rachni tank on Noveria…"

Her eyes shimmered with tears as she lowered her head, hugging herself as if the temperature had just plummeted to freezing. "Your broken body in that statis pod…" she finished softly, her voice thick.

Shepard lowered her eyes, only half-looking at her. "Are you leaving me?" she asked at last, her voice barely audible.

Arms still folded, Liara gripped her elbows as she took half a step backward, ignoring the warm damp that tumbled down her cheeks. She closed her eyes a moment, lower lip trembling faintly before she stilled it.

"I do not know," she whispered back just as softly, before she turned and walked away. It was the hardest thing she had ever done…forcing herself _not_ to look back.


	59. Chapter 59

A/N: A special thank you to Bladhaire for her input. Save some minor tweaks, the scene between Shepard and Chakwas is her work :D

Once more, if you haven't read her fanfics, especially Caduceus…you must read!

* * *

><p>"Don't lie to me," Tali said as firmly as she was able, folding her arms as she regarded the older woman standing nearby. Samara's gray eyes fixed her with such intensity the quarian engineer could almost swear she felt them burning right through her.<p>

_Maybe this wasn't such a good idea_, Tali thought. She had heard more than a few stories about asari Justicars since Samara had come aboard, and even beyond that, it remained that Samara was a very old and very powerful biotic. She could snap her fingers and bend Tali in half, if she wanted to.

Even so, the girl stood her ground. Shepard hadn't backed down in front of the Admiralty Board…or any _other_ threat that confronted her. Tali wasn't going to back down either.

"It is not my habit to lie," Samara said evenly, cool and unflappable as always. "It is a practice I gave up centuries ago when I took my Oath to the Code."

"Omission is _still_ a lie," Tali retorted. "Whatever happened with you and Shepard on Omega, it _caused_ this. I've never seen Jie Jie like this before-"

"What happened on Omega is deeply personal…and painful," Samara replied, then lowered her gaze slightly, to Tali's shock. "However you are correct. What occurred there is the cause of her suffering."

"Then you need to _fix it_," Tali insisted. "I don't care if you tell me details or not…I don't need to know them."

When Samara said nothing, Tali huffed in frustration. "She's drunk!" she declared. "She hasn't left the ship in four days! She doesn't even really have duty right now to immerse herself in because we're in dry-dock. She just spends all her time drinking and wandering about and cleaning guns in the Armory. She won't talk to me, won't talk to _anyone_. Because Liara-"

"Your feelings do you justice," Samara interrupted, "and your wisdom has called to light my own failings. For that I thank you. I have been…_blinded_, the last few days. You are correct. While I cannot 'fix this' as you say, I _can_ ease some of what is happening. To not do so would be the gravest of injustices. I will speak with the Commander and with the young asari doctor."

"Th-thank you, Samara," Tali nodded, relieved. "I just…they're my friends. I hate seeing them in so much pain."

"I understand," Samara replied. "I will go and speak with the Commander."

* * *

><p>Kasumi had first noticed it two days before, when Shepard had gone wandering past down toward the cargo hold, a cigar limp in her mouth and her flask in hand. Like the others on board, she could feel the tension surrounding the commander like a small storm that both preceded and followed her wherever she went. Specifics were not known, but scuttlebutt said that something had happened between Shepard and Liara, some kind of argument. A few claimed Liara was so angry she had tossed Shepard out of her room with biotics.<p>

No one actually asked Del specifics. The commander hated gossip as a rule to begin with, and her temper was legendary. Add into the mix that she had been drinking like a fish for days now, usually while sitting in the midst of a lot of weaponry, and no one dared even get _close_ enough to ask. Except, of course, EDI…but according to Joker the AI had gotten nowhere with her inquiry save to verify what they already knew.

Liara was _angry_.

Sydney, Tali, and Kelly had all gone to Liara's room but she was answering the door for no one, not even acknowledging anyone enough to tell them to go away. Sydney had entertained the notion of hacking the door and forcing her way in, but wisely considered that it might only make a bad situation worse.

Then Kasumi had noticed it, and knew something had to be done.

'It' was Shepard's hand. When she'd gone past the thief as if she wasn't even there, Kasumi had seen the commander's right hand, hanging limp at her side. It was swollen so much the skin was almost shiny, the knuckles a mess of black and blue punctuated with a few reddened scabs where the flesh had actually split. It took no guessing to determine that Shepard had been hitting things again…things much harder than the bags in her gym.

Two days had now gone past and the hand looked no less angry, clear testament that Del had not bothered to go to Chakwas about it. Each time Kasumi saw it she had to wince…the thing probably hurt immensely, even with the numbing effect of all the booze Shepard was downing.

A plan had hatched in her mind and now, forty-eight hours after the first time she had seen it, she was putting that plan into effect.

Perched on a stool in the armory, Kasumi tipped the bottle over Shepard's glass once again. She had not pressed the woman for details as to Liara's anger or her emotional state. Instead she kept the talk light…and kept the booze coming.

She was mostly talking _at_ the commander rather than _to_ her. Shepard had initially engaged simply by grunting or nodding on occasion but as her inebriation grew even those feeble gestures halted. Now she simply stared at her glass until the thief refilled it, then downed another dose before planting it back in its spot and staring at it again.

When Shepard started to weave a bit on her stool, the bottle of whiskey all but empty, Kasumi rose. She took hold of Del's good hand and drew her up to her feet. Lethargic, drunk, the woman allowed herself to be lead with little resistance.

"Where we going?" she mumbled as she shuffled along behind the thief obediently.

"Just for a walk, Shep," Kasumi told her, and lead her directly to the infirmary.

* * *

><p>Chakwas was standing at the main medical console along with two engineers, discussing the medi-bay upgrades that had just been implemented. At the sound of the door she turned her head and straightened, then immediately waved for the engineers to leave as she caught sight of Shepard.<p>

Walking over as the men stepped out, leaving the trio alone, Chakwas asked, "What's wrong?"

Kasumi wordlessly took hold of Shepard's right wrist, lifting it to display the wounded hand. Helen nodded, then looked at Kasumi.

"How much?" she asked.

"Nearly a full bottle of whiskey, and that's what _I_ brought her. She was already down three glasses at least before I showed up with it."

"Understood. Thank you for bringing her. I'll take care of it."

Kasumi gave Shepard's arm an affectionate squeeze and pat, before she slipped out of the room. Gently but firmly taking the Commander's elbow, Helen guided her over to sit on one of the bio-beds.

She didn't need a medical scanner to tell her Shepard's hand had been re-broken for at least a day, the bruising and swelling spoke to that. Running the scanner over the hand anyway to see what she had to fix this time the doctor surreptitiously observed the woman sitting slumped before her.

Dark smudges marred the skin underneath Shepard's eyes, which were bloodshot, and the smell of alcohol was unmistakable. Marines being the terrible gossips they were, Chakwas, as much as Kasumi, knew that _something_ had happened between Del and Liara, and she could take an educated guess as to what it was.

"No lecture?" Shepard's words were slightly slurred but the disinterest was plain in her voice - she simply didn't care.

Setting the scanner aside - after ruefully noting that the Commander had re-broken all her recent fractures and added a couple of new ones to the tally - Chakwas leant back against the adjacent bio-bed and crossed her arms. "At this point in time I fail to see what difference it could possibly make."

Shepard grunted noncommittally and half shrugged. "What's done is done."

"Why didn't you come and see me immediately after you re-broke your hand? It must be causing you a fair amount of pain."

Shepard's gaze remained fixed to the far wall. "Because it's real."

Frowning slightly before it dawned on her what Shepard meant, Chakwas felt her heart go out to the woman. "Emotional pain is real pain too, Commander, though clearly you do not handle that as well as you do physical pain."

Turning to look at Chakwas for the first time since Kasumi had lead her into the med bay Shepard fixed the doctor with flat stare. Undeterred, Chakwas stared right back, refusing to allow Del to silence her.

"Am I wrong?"

Sighing, Shepard broke the gaze and dropped her eyes. "I... don't know what to do."

"Would I be correct in guessing this has something to do with Grunt and Samara?" Chakwas held her hands up as Shepard glanced over, her demeanour closing off. "I'm not going to pry for details."

A brief nod and Shepard turned away again.

"You filled Doctor T'Soni in on the particulars."

Another nod."I've never hidden _anything_ from her in the past... the beacons made that impossible to start with any way. But she knew I was doing it, she could sense that I was blocking something from her. She was concerned... and I knew she'd find out eventually. I figured better me and now than someone else and later. I told her what I was hiding. I've made her mad before but _nothing_ like this."

Chakwas began to move around the room, collecting the supplies she would need to repair Shepard's hand. The nanites could take care of the simple fractures but there were several bones that needed realigning and quite a number of bone chips to remove. In light of Shepard's inebriation, she selected sedatives in particular that would not intermingle with the alcohol in her blood and make a bad situation worse.

"I have no wish to intrude upon your personal life, Commander, however you have obviously been quite deeply affected by what has occurred. It would be tantamount to a dereliction of duty on my part if I ignored it."

"I'll be fine."

Pausing a moment Chakwas walked over to Shepard and rested a hand on the woman's shoulder. "You are an exemplary marine, easily the best I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, serving under, and patching up. Your dedication to your crew cannot be faulted either. But things have changed since all this started. You're not alone anymore, and I think that scares you more than any threat you have ever faced."

"I'm not... " Shepard's protest was automatic, a defence mechanism so ingrained from childhood that it was practically instinctive. This time, however, she realised the truth in what Chakwas had said.

_Fuck me. I __**am**_ _scared._

Shepard had been in a couple of relationships before but never anything like this. What she had with Liara just felt so natural, so right, as though they were _meant_ to be together. Liara was _everything_ and she couldn't imagine facing what was coming without her.

Giving the Commander's shoulder a gentle squeeze Chakwas returned to gathering the last few items she needed.

"I have seen how much Doctor T'Soni means to you, Commander, and how much _you_ mean to _her_. It is rare for a couple to be granted a second chance in the way the two of you have been. I know you well enough to understand that you would do anything to help a friend or a member of your crew, regardless of the risk to yourself. You have built your career on that willingness and tested your skill and luck more times than I can count. You have every right to act as you see fit, of course, but those choices and their outcomes don't just affect _you_ anymore. Just as you want Doctor T'Soni to be safe, she wants you to be safe as well."

"I know."

Silence fell for a few minutes as Chakwas prepared several syringes for the procedure. As the doctor turned, ready to begin the surgery, she caught Shepard swiping roughly at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

"Ready Commander?"

Inclining her head slightly Shepard swung her feet up on to the bio-bed and lay down as Chakwas wheeled her cart of medical supplies over.

"I'm sorry things have turned out the way they have, Shepard. I truly hope you and Doctor T'Soni can sort things out."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Alright, here we go."

The sedative quickly took hold, Shepard's eyes blinking closed. As they shut for the final time a single tear traced down the side of her face. Gently brushing it away Chakwas sighed.

"Don't lose her, Commander. The galaxy will be the poorer for it."

* * *

><p>Samara first attempted to seek Shepard out, only to find she was in the infirmary and still sedated from a minor surgery on her hand. Departing the <em>Normandy<em> for the first time since Omega, the justicar ventured out into the station to find Dr. T'Soni instead.

As with everyone who had come before, Samara's chime at the door went unanswered. Undaunted, the justicar activated her omni-tool and hacked directly in to the communications console within. "Dr. T'Soni, this is Samara," she said. "I am at your door and would like to speak with you."

Silence reigned for a long moment, before the door silently slid open. Switching off her omni-tool the older asari stepped within the room.

YYY

Despite the situation which had landed Shepard in the lap of an Ardat-Yakshi, Liara had made no move to communicate to or confront Samara regarding events. Her reasons for holding her tongue were many.

Liara had gained quite a bit of confidence over the last few years, since finding herself trapped in that Prothean bubble and becoming part of the crew of the _Normandy_. The two years following Shepard's death had been paramount in Liara truly finding her own feet, her own will and strength.

Even so, that core of innocence and timidity that was so endearing in her had never been completely banished, and probably never would be.

Asari grew up on stories and legends of the Justicars, and Liara was no exception. Someone such as Samara would have intimidated even the highest and oldest of Matriarchs…for Liara to overcome that intimidation enough to confront her was impossible. Add into that the fact the woman had been forced to kill her own child, a pain which Liara wished never to experience and would never desire even for her worst enemy, and her silence was most definitely assured. Samara had endured enough without some young, inexperienced asari casting accusations and vitriol.

Finally, in truth, Liara did not really hold Samara to any blame. Her anger was focused solely on Shepard.

Refusing the Justicar entrance would have been the height of bad manners, tantamount to spitting upon one of the Priestesses of the Temple. As composed and collected as she was able to be, she allowed the older asari entrance, bowing her head slightly in respect as Samara stepped in.

"You honor me, Justicar," she murmured.

"The honor is mine," Samara replied.

"What may I do for you?"

"You may forgive me," Samara stated simply. "I have been taken by darkness these last few days, my heart lost in mourning. It has caused you and your chosen mate avoidable pain. I am sorry for this."

"You are not the cause of my pain," Liara told her, lifting her gaze a little, before she stepped back a pace and gestured at a service. "May I offer you a drink?"

"No, only a listening ear," Samara replied. "I do not need to tell you the nature of your Commander. I cannot express my gratitude enough for what she helped me to do."

"I am…I am sorry, Mistress," Liara met her eyes. "I am sorry for your pain, for your daughter-"

"My daughters," Samara replied bluntly. "I have three, and all are Ardat-Yakshi."

Liara lowered herself slowly into a sit. It was a nightmare any pureblood asari faced, especially were they to Join with another pureblood. Ardat-Yakshi…so extremely rare but so absolute and terrifying. It was horrible enough the woman had to learn of the condition in one of her daughters, to pursue her endlessly to put an end to the madness when the girl gave in to her blood compulsion…but _three?_

"My other two daughters chose the path of restraint," Samara continued. "They reside at the monastery. Morinth was always the most stubborn and headstrong. She could not accept the injustice thrust upon her and so she made a _different_ choice…and left _me _no other than to stop her. I pursued her for centuries. I…cannot tell you how many of her empty victims I have been faced with over this time."

"I could not imagine being faced with such a choice," Liara said quietly. "What you must have gone through…I can understand wanting to put an end to the madness, to the loss of life in such a horrible way, even if the wielder of death is your own daughter."

She lifted her chin, steeling her courage. "As I said, I do not blame you for what was done. You had to take the opportunity granted you to end it. You had your own path and you used all the tools at your disposal, even Shepard. I understand why you asked her for her aide. In your position, I would have done the same."

"Yet you blame _her_ for accepting my plea," Samara stated.

"Yes," Liara replied. "The danger to her was far too great, even if she knew what it was she was facing…"

As her blue eyes turned faintly questioning, Samara nodded slightly. "I informed her. She knew before we departed what Morinth was capable of."

"Then it makes her actions even more infuriating," Liara breathed. "To know what the viper's venom will inflict but to prod at it bare-handed anyway-"

"…and in doing so she prevented immeasurable suffering to others," Samara told her.

"As is always the case," Liara sighed wearily.

"Shepard is a rare thing in this galaxy. She is selfless."

"I am not strong enough to take her selflessness," Liara confessed sadly. "Not any more. We are not even bondmates and I feel as a widow already."

Samara moved over for the first time and sat down beside the much younger asari. "I came to offer my apologies, and my gratitude," she said kindly. "I have only one more thing to offer…my advice. But it is up to you whether or not you accept it."

"I know what you would say," Liara looked downward at her hands clasped upon her knees. "That she would not be the woman I love if she did not charge into the fore to protect innocents. That she is a soldier, and will be in dangers great and small for the rest of her life. That I cannot truly protect her any more than she can truly protect me, and that I must treasure what time I have with her rather than spend it in a futile bid to change the very things about her that I adore the most. I have heard it before, from myself as well as from others. Yet it does not change this pain I have inside. This…_knowing_…that yes, while she is running into the fire she is thinking of others…but not of _me_."

"It is true," Samara replied, meeting Liara's eyes as the other asari looked at her. "When she is running into the fire, when she is flinging herself upon the blade…she _is_ thinking of others. When she comes _back_ from doing so against impossible odds, _that_ is when she is thinking of _you_."

Liara lowered her head again, closing her eyes as she felt tears heat her gaze. "I am not strong enough," she whispered again.

"You are stronger than you know," Samara said confidently. "Shepard did not fight Saren, she did not conquer Ilos, did not save the Citadel on her _own_. When she leapt from a MAKO to fight a thresher maw…she did not leap alone."

"How do you know this?" Liara asked. Samara's smile was faint but genuine.

"That is one of Grunt's favorite stories," she replied. "I believe he heard it from Joker."

"Of course he did."

"Her strength can move mountains," Samara agreed, "But yours can shift seas. Do not doubt yourself in this. If this is love, then it is worth fighting for. If it is not, then it is not love, and you know your decision."

* * *

><p>The cast was an annoyance.<p>

Shepard barely remembered Kasumi taking her to the infirmary, talking with Dr. Chakwas. More clear was the thick, dull hangover she had when she woke up on the bio-bed a full day later, the final farewell of both sedatives and alcohol.

Because of the more extensive damage thanks to repeated re-breaks…or perhaps a babysitting measure to ensure she did not do something so foolish _yet again_ before it truly had time to heal...Chakwas had put a full glove cast on Shepard's right hand.

Thin as it was, it was made of inflexible material, preventing her from any attempt at curling her fingers or making a fist, keeping each digit stiff and rigid. Shepard could feel her fingertips pressing against the inside of the hard plastic and wire mesh as she approached the door, her right hand unconsciously attempting to clench as her left was.

Crossing the dock and moving into the complex had been a mission in and of itself. It seemed every eye was upon her as she walked. She even caught sight of Sydney and Deirdre at the end of one corridor, both women wordlessly trailing her with their eyes as she strode past.

Now, here she stood in front of the door, one hand clenched, the other desperately attempting to do the same as she stared at a spot on the steel and tried to breathe evenly.

Closing her eyes a moment, she forced herself to reach out and hit the call.

An eternity passed in just a few seconds, and the door slid open. Shepard strode in, almost unconsciously straightening, tucking her hands behind her back as if she were in the room with a superior officer.

Liara looked just as straight-backed, her eyes and expression as unreadable as any drill master. For a moment, neither spoke, before Del cleared her throat.

"You wished to speak with me?"

"Yes," Liara replied. "There is…there is much we need to discuss."

"I'm sorry," Shepard blurted almost without thinking. Her jaw tightened and she looked downward, brown eyes fixed to a point on the floor.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, a little softer. "I never meant to upset you, to hurt you. I'm stubborn, unthinking…just a goddamn _meat-head_-"

"Del, stop," Liara murmured as she moved over. Lightly she touched the human woman's chin, urging her to look upward again. The touch wanted to linger, but it flitted away again almost self-consciously. Liara's sigh was a soft and weary flutter of breath.

"I do not know how to do this," the asari confessed. "I do not know how to be strong enough for this. To watch you run away from me time and time again, flinging yourself at death while I sit in a dark room and wonder if you'll come back to me."

"I promised I would-"

"You cannot control the universe!" Liara said with more fury than she intended. "It is _not_ in your hands, Del! All the promises in the galaxy will not return you to life if you are killed…not again. So, I must _decide_. I must decide if what we have is worth all the pain, all the fear and loneliness and worry."

Her eyes welled, the blue shimmering under a sudden veil of tears. Del felt her own eyes heating helplessly in response, and struggled them back.

"I have to decide," Liara said more quietly than before, the damp in her eyes breaking free of her lashes to almost lovingly touch her cheeks, "if I want to even _try_ to be strong enough anymore."

"Li," Shepard urged softly, her voice thick, her brows knit. "Li, it's worth it…it is…it _has_ to be…"

Liara looked away, increasing the distance between them by a pace or two as she lifted a hand and wiped at her cheeks. Shepard could feel herself trembling, struggling with every molecule not to stride forward, not to gather her in her arms and promise she'd never leave again.

"After you confessed about Morinth," Liara began, her voice so low that Del had to fight to hear her. "After I…I asked you to leave, do you know what I kept thinking?"

Unable to speak, Shepard could only shake her head slightly. Liara looked at her.

"I kept thinking that I would have been better off if I had never met you."

Shepard did not dare to move, not even to blink. Her sight had grown blurry, her dark eyes aqueous and distant.

"I was wrong," Liara continued. "Even in my pain and anger, I look back on what would have been had you not come into my life. I ponder _that_ Liara, and I want to weep…I want to break down at the thought of the joy she would never have known."

Stepping back over, she lifted her hands, her palms gently cupping the human's face as Shepard lifted her damp eyes to meet hers. An unwilling tear spilled past the dark lashes, and Liara swept it away with her thumb.

"I have to decide," Liara whispered. "Is that joy _worth_ that pain? You are who you are, as am I…two halves of the same whole. I have spent these days searching for an answer I already had. I cannot lose you, and so I must be strong enough. There is no other option."

Shepard searched her eyes a moment, then gathered the asari into her arms, gripping her tightly. Liara's return embrace was no less firm, and she could feel the human woman trembling slightly as she buried her face in Liara's neck.

"I love you, Liara."

The words were half-muffled but unmistakable, delivered with rough conviction. Her fingers gripping Shepard's hair as she clung to her, Liara could feel a slight jolt of shock pass through her body, momentarily stealing her breath. Though the melds left no doubt of it, though Nan and others had repeatedly assured her of it, Shepard had never before actually spoken the words.

Liara's fingers tightened more, both in hair and in the back of Del's shirt, her own voice little more than a breathless gasp punctuated by the rush of her heart.

"_I love you too."_

* * *

><p>"I tell you, my boys do good work," Sydney declared, hands planted on her hips as she looked upward at the gleaming <em>Normandy<em>. Just over a solid week of nearly round the clock effort had more than paid off. New shielding, plating, upgraded medical bay and a prototype main gun that could put a hole in a goddamn world. Grinning over at Del she announced, "When you're done with your little errand with the Collectors I may just goddamn steal her from you, _Delilah_."

"I already have Jack threatening that, thank you very much, _Sydney_. I'll tell _you_ what I told _her_."

"What's that?"

"Over your cold, dead body."

Sydney chuckled, shaking her head as she looked over at the brunette. It had been one hell of a rough week on her friend, she knew. However the reconciliation had likely been spectacular, a conclusion only reinforced by the fact that Del and Li had not left the asari's room for the last two days. A lot of that was doubtlessly talking but the blonde had hardly come down with the last drop of rain. Talking was most certainly _not_ the only thing going on.

"How'd Liara like the tattoos?" she asked. Del smirked at her.

"She loves the phoenix," she replied as they stepped out from under the _Normandy'_s nose, heading across the bay. "She can't stop touching it. The holographic effect fascinates her. She asked what kind of bird it was so I had to explain it, and that led into an hour long conversation about various aspects of Earth mythology. Greek, Roman, Viking, Japanese, Native American…I think she bought six books on the extranet about various human myths. I seem to have opened a flood-gate on the subject."

"She _is_ an archaeologist you know. Old cultures naturally fascinate her."

"So do shiny tattoos, it seems," Shepard teased.

"So she liked the phoenix," Sydney hedged. "What about the _other_ one?"

Shepard gave a faint, lopsided grin as she idly rubbed her left wrist. "I think it's safe to say she liked it as well."

"You're only guessing?" Sydney asked with a wink.

"Oh…_no_. She…uh…made her approval _quite _clear."

The blonde chuckled. Honestly, for how big, involved, and metaphorically apropos the back tattoo was, it was the one on Del's left wrist that truly held the most meaning.

As holographic as the phoenix, the design on her wrist was simple. A pair of Chinese characters floated serenely just beneath her skin, the written form of the word _Tianlán._ Just below them were two tiny blue roses, identical to the ones painted on the flank of her guitar.

"Good. Honestly, Shepard, I'd never have pegged you for a romantic. You've changed a lot in the past couple of years. It's good to see, and I'm glad you two worked things out."

"You'll…" Shepard slowed to a halt, regarding her friend seriously. "You'll get her back to Hagalaz safely?"

"Of course! Deeds and I will be taking her ourselves tomorrow afternoon. Honestly I'm surprised that you're not taking her on the _Normandy_ on your way out."

Shepard sighed, shaking her head. "I've got an old distress beacon I have to go and check out on Aeia. Its ten years old and just now turning over, but there might be survivors and apparently Jacob's old man might be among them. It's in the opposite direction."

"Right back to the rescue," Sydney shook her head. "Never ends, does it?"

"Don't seem too," Del agreed, then made a helpless gesture, looking off across the floor as if she could see Liara through the walls. "I did tell her that we discovered the Collectors are repurposed Protheans. Forwarded her all of what EDI was able to glean. You should have seen the look on her face…it was like a kid at Christmas. I think having that to work on kind of smoothed things down a bit more but…I just can't help but feel like the biggest shit in the universe. Everything that's happened this week, and I'm _still_ doing it all over again. Just…turning around and leaving her behind."

"So go make your good-bye _count_," Syd urged, momentarily gripping her shoulder. "Then start marking down the days until you've turned the Collectors into a smear under your boot, and can come home to her again. For _good_."


	60. Chapter 60

A/N: This chapter kind of gave me fits. I'm hoping I did it justice and it doesn't just suck rocks. If it does…forgive me.

* * *

><p>The rumbling roar of waves surged against ragged stone and worn pitted steel, the sound all the lonelier for the lack of bird cry.<p>

An ocean with no sea birds pricked at the back of Del's mind like a small needle, and she squinted up from her crouch to regard the sky and the slate gray sea again, searching unconsciously for what she already knew wasn't there.

No birds, no mammals…the only animal life Aeia could boast were a few varieties of insects, scant sea life, and some very small reptilians. Plant life was prolific, however, the scent of blooming trees and grasses riding on the sea winds, stirring over the broken spine of the _Hugo Gernsback_.

The frigate had crashed into the low rocky cliff, its flank half sunk into the surf, its nose barely balanced atop the ridge. Worn by the salt air, slowly being overtaken by moss, the wreck was still remarkably intact. Old signs of activity around it made it more than clear at least a majority of the crew had survived impact.

"This place feels so empty," Kasumi murmured, hugging herself as she stared at the sea. "Hollow somehow. I've been to Tuchanka, Shep. It's a ruined desert, an almost endless Armageddon, but it feels more lifelike than here."

Straightening from her crouch at the VI's holographic feet, Shepard could only agree. "It's clear whatever crew did survive, they left this location quite a while ago. So how come the beacon just now started bleating?"

"It took them this long to fix it?" Kasumi asked, looking over at her.

"No," Shepard said. "The VI is corrupted and mostly useless for anything other than standing there and looking creepy, but its database says it was repaired six months after the crash. That was nine years ago."

"They fixed it then and just _now_ decided to switch it on?" the thief asked, startled.

"Seems like."

Motion caught her eye, and she nodded once. "Looks like Jacob and Tali are heading back."

The pair were crossing the landing bridge between the _Gernsback_ and the shore, the human man obviously grim-faced. They had gone aboard to see if they could find any information about what had happened or where the crew had gone, while Shepard checked out the beacon.

"Find anything?" she asked as they got in ear-shot.

"The crew lived aboard the ship for a short while after the crash," Tali supplied. "We found some remnants of logs, some of which were a little…disturbing."

"Disturbing?"

"Apparently the life here is toxic. Incompatible with human biochemistry," Jacob replied as they drew to a halt. "Plants as well as what animals and insects there are. To eat anything that grows on this planet causes chemical imbalances in the brain which are cumulative. Some of the later logs demonstrated confusion and memory loss."

"Surely they had food stores?" Kasumi asked.

Jacob looked at her. "For a crew this size? Food stores would have run out in a year. The beacon was damaged with no ETA on repair. After a while, well…you gotta eat, you know?"

"We can't make too many assumptions just yet," Shepard sighed. "There are too many unknowns. Right now our priority is finding survivors, if they exist. Clearly they've moved on from this location and the most logical direction to go would be inland. We…what?"

Kasumi was standing just to her right, so when Shepard felt the sharp tap to her shoulder pad she naturally assumed the thief had done it, attempting to get her attention. Her glance around at Kasumi revealed only a confused expression and a moment later, Shepard's eyes fell on something on the ground. Stooping, she picked it up.

"What is it?" Tali asked, moving around her shoulder.

"It's…an _arrow_," Shepard said, displaying the rough wooden projectile with wonderment as she realized exactly what it was she held.

Shepard had been shot and shot _at_ with many different kinds of weapons over the course of her life, but this was a first. Arrows were, of course, no threat to her while she was in her hard-suit. Though slow enough they were not deflected by her shields, the pads themselves could withstand certain calibers of gun-fire. A pointy stick had no hope of doing more than scratch them.

She scanned the trees, looking for the shooter, but nothing could be seen.

"Natives perhaps?" Kasumi wondered. "I thought there were no native intelligences here."

"There aren't," Jacob affirmed. "The crew maybe? Why would they be shooting bows and arrows? It wasn't a military ship but the _Gernsback _did have a small Armory for personal side-arms."

"Ten years, maybe they ran out of thermal clips?" Shepard ventured, then lifted her voice. "Hello? Can you hear us? It's all right, we're here to help!"

Silence. Nothing but the crashing waves and wind replied. Shaking her head, tucking the arrow in her belt, she gestured. "It came from that way, so let's head that way and see what we find. Be careful. Even an arrow can kill you if you do something fucking stupid, and they could still have small arms. Eyes peeled and watch your step. Kasumi, see if you can't get the lay of the land."

"On it," the thief agreed, vanishing under her cloak even as she trotted toward the tree line.

* * *

><p>"Hold still, <em>hold still<em>!" Shepard urged, gently but firmly trying to restrain the woman rolling and kicking upon the ground, gripping her arm and wailing in pain. From the faint bulge in the side of it, at least one bone was clearly broken.

"Shit…_shit_ is she ok?" Jacob asked, hovering over them with his weapon in hand, his dark eyes troubled.

"She's in better shape than she would have been had that arrow hit her, " Shepard reassured him. As the stranger's wails and flailing calmed down a bit, Del gingerly helped her to sit against the base of one of the trees.

The woman had appeared out of nowhere only a few minutes after they entered the tree line, hooting and waving at them with some excitement. Clearly human, she was obviously one of the _Gernsback_ crew though her clothes looked tattered and badly patched together from a dozen different outfits. She had an odd, lean and hungry look about her, but seemed no end of delighted to see them.

So delighted, in fact, that she completely ignored their weapons and all but tackled Shepard in a hug, as if they were sisters long apart and just reunited. Once Del had gotten her grip to loosen the woman began to babble. It was only a few words in that it became clear she was suffering from some serious issues.

Language seemed difficult. She spoke rapidly but kept struggling for words, or to pronounce simple ones. Abstract ideas seemed to stymie her, words and concepts replaced or substituted with far simpler ideas. She had seen them land in their shuttle, she said…or as she called it, their 'star'. They had been waiting for someone to come and take them to the sky. She didn't seem to know why, only that they had once been in the 'sky' and then had come here, and all they wanted was to get back.

Shepard kept trying to calm her down, to puzzle through what she was saying. She asked questions but struggling to answer them only seemed to frustrate the poor woman. After a few minutes, Del finally managed to get the woman's name.

"Devor…no, D-D-Deb…no…" the woman stuttered. "Deb…B-B-Bones. There are bones….bones in it…"

"Devarah Bonesta was the Chief Engineer aboard the _Gernsback_," Jacob blinked. "She had a genius IQ. It must be the toxic food that did this to her."

Jacob speaking seemed to upset Devarah, and she clapped her hands over her ears, ducking her head a moment in the manner of a child struggling to make the Boogeyman go away. Puzzled by her behavior but able to see he clearly alarmed her, Jacob stepped back to give her room.

Only moments later he saw a shape in the trees, the lifted weapon. Reacting, he lunged and tackled Devarah out of the way just as an arrow sailed by and sunk into a tree. The pair crashed to the ground as Shepard set off a few warning shots into the air to scare off their attacker, and the impact had sent Devarah screaming and wailing in pain.

"It's all right," Shepard said now, her brown eyes intent through her face-plate as she finally got the woman to still.

"Sorry, s-s-sorry," the woman gasped, still cradling her arm as she wept, face contorted. "I d-didn't mean to be b-bad-"

Brows knitting Shepard looked at her. "You weren't…you weren't bad," she said. "Why do you think you were bad?"

Devarah sniffled, then blinked wetly. "What?"

"Why do you think you were bad?"

Bafflement was the only expression she donned. She shifted a little, gasping as she moved her broken arm carelessly. She gripped it and began to wail again as if she had just injured it.

"Keelah…I think she forgot she'd hurt it," Tali pointed out sadly. "That fast, and she's already forgotten what happened."

"Devarah, it's ok, you're safe," Shepard soothed again. "Do you know who is shooting at us?"

"Wh-what?"

"Shooting? Do you know who…" Shepard sighed in frustration, then drew the arrow out of her belt, showing it to her. "This. Do you know this?"

"Hunters," Devarah gasped, wide-eyed. "The Hunters…they are sick, they are angry. He made them leave, made them eat and leave…now they fight."

"He…who is 'he?'" Shepard pressed.

"He…there…but…but not there…" Her trembling finger pointed at Jacob, who blinked at her again as Shepard squinted.

"He…he looks like Jacob?"

"His face…there is his face but…but it's _not_," she stammered, then suddenly gripped Del's wrist, her trouble vanishing into eagerness once more. "_She_ knows! She keeps all of it! We will see her!"

She got to her feet, holding her broken arm cradled against her side and tugging urgently on the commander's arm. "She knows!"

"Jie Jie?"

"Just a moment, Devarah," Shepard said gently before looking at Tali. "If she can lead us to the others we may be able to find out what's going on here. Jacob…I take it you look a lot like your father?"

"Been years since I've seen him, but yeah…Mom always said there was a strong resemblance," he replied, obviously troubled.

"Whatever's going on, she doesn't seem to like him much," Shepard murmured.

"You can say it," Jacob replied, frowning. "She's terrified of him. I mean, begging me not to punish her? The way she looks at me, like I'm about to beat her?"

"Come on!" Devarah urged again, no less frantic, giving Del's arm another pull. "She knows! She has all of it!"

"Looks like we're going to camp," Shepard said, giving the girl a reassuring gesture. "Hopefully there are some answers there. Ok, ok, Devarah, we're coming."

As they started to follow the former engineer she seemed satisfied, more than eagerly picking her way through the trees. They had not gone far when Kasumi reappeared. "Found a guide, I see," she commented, gesturing at the striding Devarah, who was still hugging her broken arm to her chest.

"Something like that. What did you find?" Shepard asked.

"There's a small camp less than a mile ahead. Seems she's taking you there. Woods are crawling with armed men, however."

"Firearms?"

"No, just bows and slings. They don't seem to be organized though, not really a cohesive group. I don't think they pose any real threat to us."

"All right. Devarah here says there's someone who 'knows' up in the camp so hopefully we can get a handle on the sit. Tali, radio up to the _Normandy_ and let them know to get on the horn with the Alliance. If nothing else these people need evac and some serious medical treatment."

* * *

><p>"Here…here…"<p>

The data pad was old, battered. The woman crouching on the dirt floor of the cobbled together shelter beamed a vague, guileless grin as she urged it into Shepard's hand.

This was 'her', a woman Jacob swiftly identified as Christiana Hollis, the CMO of the _Gernsback_ crew. Once a doctor with two advanced medical degrees, she had treated Devarah's broken arm by tying a vine around it and sprinkling dirt on top of that, before retrieving a small box hidden beneath some blankets that smelled like an old sheepdog.

As Hollis addressed Shepard, Tali and Kasumi moved over to Devarah's side, gently putting medi-gel on the bruised arm to at least numb her pain until it could get real treatment.

Devarah seemed fascinated with Tali's helmet, continually touching her face-plate with wonderment, leaving the quarian to gently but persistently dissuade her.

Meanwhile, Shepard was reading over the data pad, one of four that was stored in the box Hollis had retrieved. As she read, darkness began to move through her eyes. Passing the first pad to Jacob she took out another, then another, the shadow only sharpening into contained rage.

They were logs, maintained by the doctor as long as she was able before the decay had robbed her ability to write. She had retained enough sense to keep them hidden, though even she didn't know why she had done so now. Outlined in them were the details of the crash and the insanity that had happened afterward.

Finishing the last pad and passing it to Jacob, who looked simultaneously furious and horrified, Shepard reached out and gently put her hand on the doctor's shoulder, meeting her eyes. She asked only one question.

"Where is he _now_?"

* * *

><p>The sun had brightened as the day had grown later. The crude deck overlooked a small bay fifty feet below, and in the light of the sun the water here looked more inviting blue than the slate gray it had at the wreck.<p>

His beaming grin was almost angelic as Shepard stepped past him, leaning on the railing of that deck and drawing out a cigar. As she lit it, her eyes gleamed a reflection of that distant blue.

"I'll get you something nice when we get back to Alliance space, sweetheart," he said, his tone all charity. "In thanks for…what you had to put up with. I have to have some back-pay coming."

Silence was all that greeted him. A silence deep in its violence and deadly in its chill. Clearly, he was oblivious to it.

"Maybe I'll even take you to dinner," he offered. Shepard looked at him for the first time, turning to lean against the railing as she lifted a brow, drawing her cigar from her mouth and letting out a stream of smoke. Mistaking the look as interest, he pursed his lips a little in appreciation.

"If I'd known they made marines that looked as good as you, I'd have joined the Corps," he told her, reaching out and laying a hand on her waist.

It was only there for a breath, a brush. He felt the impact of her fist in his chin much more intently.

Fortunately, Chakwas had finally declared Shepard's hand healed before they were even in orbit around Aeia. Beautifully delivered to the point of his chin, the jab landed Acting Captain Ronald Taylor hard on the ground. Blinking away stars, he gaped at her as she tucked her smoke back in her teeth and sat down on his thighs, drawing her pistol and ramming the barrel up under his chin. He froze, eyes wide.

"Wh-what is this?" he asked.

"_This_ is me about to exact a bit of justice for your crew," she said around her cigar. "Or should I say, your _harem?_"

"What are you talking about? What-"

Keeping her pistol beneath his chin, she tilted her head slightly. "Tali?"

The quarian walked across the deck, displaying a data pad with a firm jab of her hand. "_This_ is what she's talking about, _bosh'tet_!"

"It's a crew log," Shepard said. "Understandable at first, restricting rations for the senior crew while the beacon was being repaired. But then you began to wonder, didn't you? You began to think, as they got simpler and simpler, more and more trusting. _In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king_, isn't that it? You could do whatever you wanted…and you _did_."

"It…it wasn't like that!"

"Then the safe food started to run out, even though you hoarded it all for yourself. Everyone else was simple or exiled…funny how all the exiled Hunters are _men_, isn't it? It was either stay here and lose your own mind or finally turn on that long-repaired beacon and whisk your way back off to the luxuries of Alliance space and pretend nothing happened here at all."

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Let me make myself plain," Del growled, leaning forward. "I'm going to _cut you apart_, sliver by sliver until you fucking _beg_ me to shoot you."

He looked terrified a moment, before his face tightened in defiance. "You're insane! You don't have the guts!"

Shepard's grin was almost feral as she plucked the stogie from her mouth with her free hand. "Oh, I _am_ insane," she told him. "And that makes me quite capable of a lot of…really _fun things_."

Extending her tongue, she quite pointedly pressed the cherry of her cigar to it, extinguishing it.

Taylor went pale.

Flicking the butt away Shepard rose, grabbing him by the shirt and hauling him back up to his feet. His shoulders came up hard against the wall of rock the deck was anchored too as she shoved him.

"Fortunately for _you_," Del snarled. "_I'm _not the judge and jury…not this time."

Tali stepped aside, her data pad still in hand, as Kasumi and Jacob stepped up on the deck, heading their way. The Boy Scout looked almost as murderous as Del did, and his father blinked at the sight of him.

"N-no…_Jacob_? No, not Jacob…"

"Why _not_ me?" Jacob all but spat. "Do you think anyone else would excuse this?"

"You don't understand-"

"I think we understand a little _too_ much," he retorted. "There isn't a name for the kind of evil you are…there isn't an excuse in the world for what you did here, what you did to your crew…people who _trusted_ you!"

"I just…I didn't know what else to do!" Taylor blurted. "We didn't even know if we could get the beacon fixed. The crew was upset, I had to take a hard-line, keep control-"

"By throwing out any male that opposed you and keeping the women _like pets_?" Jacob fumed. Fists clenched he took a step closer, only to be stopped by Kasumi's soft grip on his elbow.

"What are you going to do to me?" Taylor asked weakly.

"Jacob, it's your call," Shepard said. She had one hand still plastered to the man's chest, the other holding her pistol firmly on his face. Directing her next words at her prisoner she snarled in a low voice, "You're fucking _lucky_ I'm letting _him_ make the call. You're no better than a goddamn rapist, a _slaver_…and I know a dozen goddamn ways to dispose of a _corpse_."

"Please…Jacob, please, don't let her-"

The younger man's jaw flexed before he looked at Shepard. "Commander…"

Stepping back a pace, Shepard lowered her pistol. Ronald blew out a breath of relief, fixing his eyes on his son.

"Thank you, oh…thank you Jacob. I always knew you were a better man than-"

His words broke off in a bark as Jacob planted a fist in his gut, folding him over and dropping him to his knees. "You are going back to _Earth_," he said firmly. "You're going to face what you did. Everybody is going to know about it…and you _are_ going to pay for it!"

As he straightened, Shepard planted her boot on Taylor's ass, shoving him forward until he landed on his stomach. Straddling him again she wrenched his arms around behind him, catching a pair of cuffs that Kasumi tossed her and securing him.

"Shuttles will be landing any moment," Tali reported, checking her omni-tool. "Dr. Chakwas and her group can treat any outstanding injuries and we can get these people prepared for full evac. We have a colony ship, the _Tungsten_, that's willing to transport them back to Alliance space. ETA six hours."

* * *

><p>Shepard was leaning on a tree at the edge of the small camp, watching as the erstwhile crew of the <em>Gernsback <em>were evaluated and loaded on to shuttles to be transported to the _Tungsten. _Ronald Taylor had already been taken aboard. He'd be spending the trip back to Earth in the brig, awaiting charges. Shepard had passed the data pads and other evidence to the captain, who had seemed just as horrified as they had about the situation.

Silent, Shepard didn't glance over as the form drew up to her shoulder, the young quarian folding her arms as she stood beside her friend and also regarded the camp.

"I cannot believe you put out your cigar on your tongue," Tali said at last, amusement in her voice. Del smirked.

"Doesn't hurt or cause any damage if you do it right," Shepard told her. "And it tends to freak people the fuck out, which was the idea."

"I thought he was going to lose control of his bodily functions," Tali agreed.

"Would have been the least the fucker deserved."

Still watching the activity in the camp, Del's brown eyes landed on Jacob and Kasumi, standing in the distance. The man still looked upset, understandably. Every inch of his posture spoke of tension, of fury. Kasumi had one hand on his arm and was talking to him, her posture more relaxed but intent, concerned.

"He was so angry," Tali said, following her gaze. "I mean, he had a _really_ good reason but for a moment, I thought he might actually have told you to kill his own father. Would…you have done it had he asked you to?"

"No," Shepard said, then looked at the quarian. "Not that it matters. Jacob _wouldn't_ have asked me to do that. Even if he was so furious as to want to kill the man, he'd have done it himself."

"Would you have let him?"

"No," Shepard reassured. "The last thing Jacob deserves is to be afflicted with such a worthless ghost."

* * *

><p>"I'm sorry, Shepard."<p>

The words punctuated the tink of a carafe against the edge of a mug, steaming black brew pouring in to fill it. Shepard gave her XO a weary, slanted little grin.

"Sorry for pouring me coffee? Miranda, that's one thing you _never_ have to apologize for."

"Good to know," the Australian smiled slightly, setting the carafe down and lifting her own mug up in two hands, lightly blowing at the thin, lazy tendrils of pale gray that drifted up from it. "However that is not what I meant."

"What did you mean then?"

They were sitting in the mess, which was deserted save for them. Miranda rarely slept more than four or five hours in a night so the early hour was not unusual for her. Shepard only rarely popped her head in before 0600. Given that it was now just after 0430, the commander had clearly experienced less than an ideal night's rest.

Taking a sip, the black-haired woman set the mug down. "I did not think that you'd be fully up to the task," she admitted. "The mission, I mean. You were a hero, Shepard…and a good soldier, but I never dreamed that…well. That we'd be sitting here."

"Where are we sitting exactly?" Del asked, knowing full well the other woman did not mean her last sentence literally.

"On the cusp of the Omega 4 relay."

"We still need an IFF."

"I know, but I did not think even you could bring us _this_ far," Miranda said. "I doubted you and your abilities. That is why I apologize. I was…I was mistaken, about you."

"Probably not as mistaken as you think. We've come a long way but we're not at the end of this yet. I could still royally fuck up the stew. But…thank you. I appreciate that."

"Honestly, Shepard, I wish you'd joined up with Cerberus sooner-" Miranda began, then immediately halted when she realized what she'd said. At the same moment, stone passed over Shepard's face.

"Sorry," Miranda colored. "I know…I know you're not _with_ Cerberus. I just meant-"

"I know," Shepard replied with a sigh. "Honestly, Miranda, it baffles me why _you_ are with them."

"Sorry?"

"You're intelligent, resourceful. You've seen what they do, what they're capable of. Why are _you_ with them?"

"I believe in their ideals, Shepard," Miranda told her. "Their goals-"

"Are misguided," Shepard replied. "Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping our own, but there's a line. The ends do _not _justify the means. Not _their _kind of means."

"I agree, they've made some mistakes…but they're few compared to the _advances_ they've made, the things they've accomplished. They…what?"

Shepard was smirking faintly. Shaking her head, she leaned back in her chair. "Just that you were saying 'they'…and not 'we'."

Miranda scowled and Del waved a hand. "Look. It's not my place to tell anyone how to live or what to believe in," she said. "But the long and short of it, Miranda, is that you're my friend. I know we didn't get along when we first started out on this 'little adventure' of ours but…well, you've kind of grown on me. Kind of like a plague."

Despite her scowl, Miranda couldn't help a faint huff of amusement, even as she rolled her eyes. "Lovely image."

"Isn't it? At any rate…I think you sell yourself short. I think that the Illusive Man sees you as nothing but just another weapon in his arsenal, a devotee he can cast aside…and you deserve _better_ than that. A fuck of a lot better."

Only a few months ago, Miranda would have immediately dismissed what Del had just said. Cerberus had given her everything. A purpose, resources, protection for her sister, something real to cling to. Until the Lazarus project had begun, Miranda had never had reason to doubt anything about her chosen path. Her faith and resolve had remained unshaken.

Having the Spectre on board, however…working with her so closely…it was as if a new light had been shone upon everything she had thought. Did the Illusive Man actually value her or did he see her as he saw Shepard…just a tool, one he was more than willing to discard when she'd outrun her use to him?

Shepard waved her fingers slightly with a sigh. "Now it's my turn to be sorry, Miranda."

"No, it's…it's all right, Shepard. I'll leave you to your breakfast."

She rose with her empty tray, the commander watching her silently as she went to discard it and then vanished into her office, before lowering her gaze back to her coffee with a sigh.

* * *

><p>"<em>Thug?"<em>

_The slope leading down from the athenaeum shifted under her boots as Eír hurried down it after the krogan, her brother not even sparing a glance as he walked. _

"_Thug, wait!" _

_A scream, a familiar voice, and Eír turned around, horrified to see the building behind her in flames, riots of orange licking up toward a maniacal sky._

"_Shrive!"_

_Struggling to remount the slope as the firm dirt transformed into sand, Eír could hear herself sobbing. "Shrive!"_

"_You should have listened to me," Gellian's voice broke through, the cadaverous woman strapped to her grotesque leash, the Amazonian death-head figure of Shepard squatting nearby._

_As Eír looked, Shepard stood and strode her way, long fingers reaching out and grasping her shoulders tightly, lifting her off her feet. Her breath was the wash of the grave._

"_You should have listened… Eír," she hissed, her face melting as she laughed. "__**Eír**__."_

* * *

><p>"<em><strong>Eír!"<strong>_

Lavender eyes popped open, a rushing wave of blue fire filling the air. Revolting, the asari surged off the bed with a primal scream, biotics roaring in a blast of fury.

Her hands closed over soft skin, gripping arms as they slammed into a wall. Teeth bared she prepared to tear her enemy apart, to turn Del Shepard into little more than a bloody slush.

Then a voice cried out in pain, and she blinked. Warm tan skin was replaced by blue. Dark, violent brown eyes by soft azure.

Azure lit with fear and pain.

Air came back in a rush, and weakly Eír stumbled back, gaping in dumbfounded misery. Shrive collapsed down to her knees, tendrils of purple blood spilling from her nose and lip. Cold, stark reality flooded into Eír's mind and she began to tremble, aghast.

"Sh-_Shrive_?" she asked in a tiny, tentative voice, falling into a sit as her knees seemed to give out. Shifting, she crawled forward, tears flooding her vision.

Asleep…she must have been asleep, having a nightmare. Shrive had tried to wake her, and Eír had…

"_Shrive…?"_ she half sobbed, her hand shaking as she reached out toward the other asari, not quite actually touching her.

The huntress sat half-crumpled on the floor, one hand braced on the ground, the other pressed to her head. Her eyes were half-lidded, dazed, and the woman was clearly in pain. As Eír reached out toward her Shrive unconsciously recoiled back, and the younger asari's hand snapped away.

With an agonizing sob, Eír bolted to her feet and fled the room.

"Eír?" Shrive's rough call punctuated the dazed huntress stumbling to her own feet. Her head spun and she mopped the blood from her lip as she weaved out into the living space just in time to see Eír disappear through the front door and out into the darkness.

Limping out into the warm night, trying to steady her spinning head, Shrive's brow creased in worry as she called out into the dark. "Eír? _Wait!_ Eír!"

No response, and nothing to see but the heavy night past the wan pools of the colony lights. Turning, Shrive retreated back into the house, quickly gathering up some more sensible clothes, struggling to steady herself, ignoring pain.

There was no telling what Eír would do out in the night by herself, consumed with guilt and fear at what she had done.

Reaching the door again, the huntress stumbled down the small steps and to level ground, her voice ragged, eyes heated as she once more called into the unfeeling night. "Eír! Stop, please! Come back!"

Silence.

"_Eír!_"


	61. Chapter 61

A/N: Hey everyone! **waves frantically** Whoops, look at that, I danced left of canon again in this chapter.

I'm so naughty.

So, I know a few of you are slightly frustrated at my 'fade to black' romance scenes. I do them because I more or less suck at writing in-depth shmexy.

Fortunately, KalenCaelli does not have that problem…in fact, she does an absolutely stellar job of it, even if it does make me turn all kinds of red.

So for you fans of Del and Liara AND the shmexy, she has written a one-shot covering that fateful night before Ilos. Major MA warning of course…check it out if you dare And remember to tell her how much you love it!

www . fanfiction . net / s / 8029164 / 1 / Surrender

So…ahem.

Oh, and the lullaby in this section is by Eugene Field. So…credit.

On that note…last chapter until Monday! Y'all have a great weekend!

* * *

><p>Shrive's boots sank into rich, soft soil as she moved down the slope, following the faint trail that Eír had left behind. It was testament to the upset of both women that Eír had left any kind of trail to follow at <em>all<em>, and that Shrive was not taking any pains whatsoever to prevent from doing the same.

Reaching the base of the slope, the colony lights now only a small and distant pool behind her, the huntress navigated the rocky ground and moved toward the thickening copses of trees that merged into a small, scrubby forest not a mile further.

The tracks were faint but easy enough for the trained asari to follow. She picked up speed on the more even ground, ignoring the ache in her head and her leg. She was far more concerned over her partner and what Eír might do in her horror than she was a few bumps and bruises.

The girl's nightmares had been getting worse. There were times she thrashed so that Shrive was afraid she would injure herself. This was one of those times, the poor girl flailing and screaming so much in her sleep that when Shrive had first awakened, she thought they were under attack. She knew Eír would blame herself for lashing out as she had and injuring Shrive but the huntress kept the blame firmly where it belonged: on Gellian.

They were both clinging to the hope that Dr. Solus had given them, that he would be able to help her be free of this conditioned affliction, but though found, the solution would take some time to implement. Right now Dr. Solus was strongly engaged in a mission as one of Shepard's own crew, and it was a task that could not be abandoned. Bringing Eír to him would be completely disastrous (having her and Shepard on the same planet was unthinkable, let alone the same _ship_), and so they had to wait.

It was strange, how a wait could become even more arduous when the goal was finally in sight.

As she neared the first copse she could see Eír's tracks become closer together, more obvious. The girl had slowed from a run into a walk. As Shrive stepped under the boughs of the first tree, she heard a soft sob.

"Eír…"

Heading toward the source of the sound she spied the girl huddled beside some broken boulders, curled up tightly with her knees drawn to her chest. Lifting her miserable lavender eyes as Shrive approached she shrank back.

"Don't! Don't t-touch me, don't come closer!" she sniffled. "I'll just hurt you!"

"No you _won't_," Shrive stated firmly as she swept out the long, heavy coat she had bundled under her arm. Crouching in front of Eír, who could not retreat any further unless she somehow learned to merge through rock, Shrive draped it over her. Eír had run out in her sleeping garments, which were hardly proof against the cold Aratoht night.

"I _did_…I _hurt_ you," Eír said miserably, her eyes swollen and damp with tears.

"It was _not_ your fault, sweet one. I am fine. You could have torn me apart, put me through a wall…you did _not_."

"It _is_ my fault!" Eír gasped furiously. "It is because I am different, because I'm a _monster!"_

Pulling her in, Shrive embraced her tightly. Eír hesitated only a moment before he flung her arms around her love, gripping her with a desperate, miserable strength.

"You are _not_ a monster," Shrive insisted.

"I _am_," Eír moaned. "I am because Mother made me this way. I hate her, Shrive…_I hate her_! I am so sorry…I _never_ want to hurt you!"

"I know, sweet," Shrive whispered, her own eyes hot with tears. "I am here. I am here, and I am not going to leave you to this alone. I am not afraid, Eír. I know your heart. I love you. I will not lose you, not even to your own fear."

Rising, she drew Eír to her feet, helping her to bundle in the coat before she simply picked the girl up. Cradling her close, she headed back toward the colony, carrying her into their small prefab. Eír had fallen silent but had not stopped weeping. Shrive set her upon the couch, wiping her tears before she turned and left just long enough to put tea on. As the older girl returned to the couch and sat down, Eír shifted onto her knees, flinging her arms around her and clinging to her once more. Shrive hugged her tightly, planting small kisses on her cheek.

"You will have to cinch me," Eír murmured at last, her voice weak and trembling, but edged with conviction. Blinking, Shrive pulled back just far enough to stare at her.

"What?"

"At night…when we sleep. You will have to cinch me, so that…if I have another nightmare, I can't hurt you, at least not with biotics-"

"Eír-"

"_You have to_," the girl repeated intently, her long fingers gripping Shrive's shoulders. "Shrive please…what if this happens again? What if the next time I wake to find that you…that I…"

She choked on the words, embracing the huntress again as she buried her face in her neck. "Just until Dr. Solus can help me…please. _Please._"

Swallowing the knot that wanted to form in her throat, Shrive's tears mingled with Eír's as the older girl slowly nodded. "All right, sweet thing…all right."

* * *

><p>The two women faced each other- light and flesh, oblivious calm and static fury-while just outside thunder rolled in an angry, snarling gasp.<p>

"_Subject Zero is showing great strides to improving her biotic potential, but it's not enough_," the holographic shade of Gellian Osco stated to her unknown listeners. Pacing slightly back and forth, hands clenched and hackles raised as if she could were measuring an opponent for a brawl, Jack's skin crackled and bristled with faint snaps of blue energy. Behind her at a respectful distance, Del and Miranda were silent spectators.

Beyond a picture in the information files that Miranda had provided her from Cerberus, Shepard had never actually _seen_ Osco. The holograph on the pad before them was still fairly young in her life, early to mid-twenties. Though showing some sign of her self-medicative drug use this Gellian was still pretty and more or less healthy, her blonde hair gloss…nothing like the ravaged, withered waste that had finally died on Tuchanka.

"_Full chromosomal therapy with the lot seven serum proved unsuccessful, prompting almost immediate immune collapse and tumor development in Subjects 10 through 14. I __**told**__ Dr. Benson not to try that goddamn lot until I had finished my study but he moved forward without approval. At least he had the sense not to try that on __**my **__girl."_

Jack actually spat at the hologram's feet as it went still, the entry having concluded. "Play next!" she barked.

The holograph shifted slightly, Osco's clothing changing under her lab-coat, her hair now pulled back rather than hanging loose. _"Zero's abilities have responded more than I could have hoped for thanks to this last protocol, however her aggression levels have increased. She is becoming more and more difficult to rouse from her room. Aethis now insists on using his little toy though I have told him more than once that a kind hand would yield better results. He demanded to know when I grew a conscience. The Illusive Man even questioned my resolve when it comes to my girl. Pompous goddamn fool. You would think he would want a more cooperative, compliant super-biotic than one that would rather tear his face off…still. It is his funeral."_

The image went still again, and once more Jack demanded it play the next. Nothing happened, the recordings clearly having reached their last entry. Jack kicked the base of the pad with her boot, hard enough to crack the casing and dissolve the holographic Osco into a sheen of static.

"You _see_? You see what Cerberus did to me?" she demanded, stalking a pace or two toward Miranda as she jabbed a finger back at the pad.

"It wasn't Cerberus, it was Osco," Miranda defended. "That woman was clearly unstable-"

"Are you deaf as well as _stupid,_ Cheerleader?" Jack raged. "The Illusive Man 'questioned her resolve'! _Were you even goddamn paying attention?"_

Jack's biotics were crackling and hissing over her skin, her eyes on fire. As Miranda straightened, her defensive posture suddenly shifting toward the offensive, Shepard stepped in between them.

"That's _enough_," she said sternly, her firm glare landing squarely on Jack. The biotic glared back, before snapping around on her heel and striding down the corridor.

"Let's just get this over with! I don't know why you brought the fucking _Cheerleader _along, anyway!" she barked as she went.

Miranda sighed in irritation, then shook her head before stepping in beside Shepard as they trailed after Jack. "Why _did_ you bring me along?" she asked. "You had to know this would happen."

"Which part?" Shepard asked stonily. "The part where you see exactly what Cerberus does? Or the part where you continue trying to justify it?"

Miranda's mouth fell open a moment as she stared at Del. "Is _that_ why you brought me?" she accused after a moment. "You wanted to rub my face in-"

Shepard turned, her hand slapping lightly into Miranda's shoulder to halt her as she fixed her with a look. "I wanted you to _see_, Miranda," she said. "You are a good person but you are so blinded by what you think are weaknesses that you allowed the Illusive Man and his sick ideas pervert you. You are so _trapped_ under the weight of him and your father that you don't even know _who you are_. You went from one man that wanted to control and exploit you, right into the arms of another one with the _same_ motives. Well_, I_ know who you are. You are a fighter. You are a determined and a compassionate woman who cannot _possibly _look at all of this and see _rationalization_. I _refuse_ to see you do this to yourself any more. So, you _will_ keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and you _will_ realize your own worth or by _fuck _is my witness, I _will_ goddamn _beat it into you_!"

* * *

><p>The thunder was still snarling outside, but the sound was dimmer the deeper they moved into the ruined Teltin complex. Between Jack's almost constantly rippling biotics and now Miranda's dark brooding, however, it felt like they were carrying their own storm along with them.<p>

Three more working consoles had revealed even more records about the abandoned Cerberus project, though neither turned out to belong to Osco. As Jack played each one, Miranda wisely kept her mouth shut.

Jack's fury mingled with confusion as it was revealed the other children had been experimented on in order to keep _her_ safe, and that the riot that had resulted in her finally escaping this hellish place had not actually started at her behest, but had already begun by the time she had bolted from her cell.

It was when they passed through a small morgue in the lower reaches of the facility that things started to get a bit strange.

A dead varren lay in the hall just beyond, the blood pooled around it fresh enough they could still smell it. The hole in its neck was clearly inflicted by a rifle.

Shepard immediately pulled out her sidearm, scanning the hall as Jack crouched by the animal, touching its neck with a scowl. "The fuck? Who shot the varren? This place is supposed to be empty-"

Shepard mistook the faint click for the prep of a gun and whirled, aim snapping toward one wall as an old computer interface folded out, it's holographic interface reading only 'Subject confirmed. Initiate playback.'

A moment later a woman's voice filled the hallway, singing softly.

_The sky is dark and the hills are white  
>As the storm-king speeds from the north to-night;<br>And this is the song the storm-king sings,  
>As over the world his cloak he flings:<br>"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;"  
>He rustles his wings and gruffly sings:<br>"Sleep, little one, sleep."_

"The fuck?" Shepard blurted in confusion, lowering her pistol a little but not reshipping it. Still crouched next to the dead varren, Jack had gone pale, her eyes wide. As the singing continued, she spoke the words along with the singer.

_On yonder mountain-side a vine  
>Clings at the foot of a mother pine;<br>The tree bends over the trembling thing,  
>And only the vine can hear her sing:<br>"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;  
>What shall you fear when I am here?<br>Sleep, little one, sleep."_

"Jack…Jack, what is it?" Shepard asked warily, brows knotting. Remembering Eír's conditioning at Osco's hand her stomach suddenly went cold and knotted. Who was to say Osco hadn't done the same thing with Jack? She'd done so many different experiments on her, it was hardly outside the realm of possibility. What if this song was some kind of trigger? What if just hearing it made Jack snap and blindly attack them in some pre-programmed fight response?

Ignoring her, Jack continued her near-silent spoken recital along with the singing as the tune played through its final stanza.

_The king may sing in his bitter flight,  
>The pine may croon to the vine to-night,<br>But the little snowflake at my breast  
>Liketh the song <em>_I__ sing the best, -  
>"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;<br>Weary thou art, anext my heart;  
>Sleep, little one, sleep."<em>

As silence fell, Jack's suddenly glossy eyes shifted down to the varren before her muscles corded into steel. As she straightened, Shepard tried again. "Jack…?"

"Jesus fuck, I'm fine," the biotic snapped.

"What was that?" Miranda asked.

"It…just…" Jack gave a growl of frustration, then strode past. Moving down a set of small stairs, she left the other two little choice but to follow her as she stepped through a broken door and into a lab.

It was clear just standing in the room bothered her. Every sinew of her body was taut under the skin, making the tattoos over her arms and shoulders seem to writhe. The room was damaged and dirty, but still contained the ghostly hint of antiseptic, of medi-gel.

As Shepard and Miranda stepped in, Jack spoke without turning her head. "It was a lullaby," she said tightly. "I'd…I'd forgotten it. I used to love that song."

"A lullaby?"

"Osco used to sing it to me," Jack admitted softly. "When I was very small, when I first came here. It was so long ago, and then to hear it again-"

"That console was rigged to trip and play that song," Shepard told her. "It was rigged to _you_, Jack…like Osco knew you were going to be coming back here."

"She _was_ a genius," Miranda murmured.

"This was _her_ lab," Jack said. "This is where they would take me. She'd drug me, sometimes, and I would lay on that table in a haze and watch her record her notes in her console."

Striding over to the dark computer interface she accessed it. The HI lit up weakly, clearly having little power left. Filing through its display, Jack spotted a file that was titled the same as the first line of the lullaby. Selecting it, she stepped back as a trio of holographs appeared in the room.

One was Osco again, seated upon a chair. On her lap was a little girl, no older than three years old, cradled on her lap. The child was sniffling, her brown hair mussed as she leaned on Osco's chest, sucking her thumb. Osco was stroking that hair, softly singing the same lullaby to the girl as she did.

"_You're not going soft on me, are you Osco?"_ the Illusive Man asked. He was the third holograph, his form unmistakable. Shepard couldn't help the glower at it when it first appeared standing almost shoulder to shoulder with her.

The younger Gellian inclined her chin toward the man…or more specifically, his cigarette. _"You shouldn't smoke around her, she's just a baby."_

"_She's not a baby, she's hope for humanity's future. She's unbridled potential…potential __**you**__ will harness."_

"_I __**know**__ why I'm here,"_ Gellian said sternly. "_That doesn't mean you can't have a little compassion-"_

"_**Compassion**__? Coming from you? We cannot __**afford**__ compassion right now, Osco. This is the price we have to pay to make certain that humanity reaches its rightful place in the galaxy…sadly we must sacrifice innocents to insure the safety and progress of countless more innocents. You cannot think of Subject Zero as a child. She is the basis, the template of what we are trying to achieve-"_

"_She __**has **__a name,"_ Osco said heatedly, holding the girl defensively as if trying to shield her from his words. _"Her name is Jennnnnnniffffff-f-f-f-f…"_

Her words trailed off as the recording corrupted, the power in the console dying. Whirling toward it, Jack slammed it with her hand.

"No! What? You can't fucking die _now_ you fucker!"

The dead console remained oblivious to her blows, remaining cold and silent. Jack gripped its edges hard enough to make her knuckles turn white, slamming her steel-toed boot into it in a barrage of furious kicks, spitting epithets until she was nearly gasping. "It's bullshit!" she declared. "_Bullshit!_ She didn't care about _me_! She was a sick fuck, a _lunatic-_…!"

"Yeah, she _was_ sick," Shepard said, her voice a low and soft counterpoint to Jack's choking fury. _"Sick_, Jack. She was trapped in the madness of her own intelligence, her own brain, but…well, _fuck_. Benezia saw something in her worth saving, right? Even if others didn't. Maybe beneath it all she _did_ care about you. Back then she was still mostly in control of herself. Liara told me that even before she died, even when she was completely lost in her insanity, she still showed affection and compassion to her own tank-bred children. She wasn't _just_ a madwoman gloating over her forged weaponry."

Jack, her posture half slumped, hands fisted, gave the console one good last thump with her boot. "Bullshit," she mumbled again, though it lacked the same conviction.

"Maybe that's what this was about," Miranda said tentatively. When Jack glared daggers at her, she frowned a little. "I'm just saying…she rigged that console to play for _you_, not anyone else. She saved this file for you to see. Just before it died she was about to say your name, Jack…your _real_ name. Jennifer…something. Maybe she knew that you'd be drawn back here someday, and she wanted to give you…an answer, maybe. A tie to who you _really_ are, where you _really_ came from-"

"Oh yeah? Why don't _you_ just tell me?" Jack challenged. "Why don't you just tell your _boss_ to tell me? I'm sure _he_ knows. He was standing here in this same goddamn room with me when I was _two fucking years old!_"

"I don't know the answer, Jack. I would tell you if I did, and I already gave Shepard everything I could find about you. You've read it," Miranda replied.

"And asking the Illusive Man?"

"It's not that simple," Miranda told her. "I can ask all I want but he hardly answers to _me_."

Jack strode forward, moving toe to toe with the other woman. "You could at least _try_," she glared. Miranda looked at her a moment, before she nodded slowly.

"You're right," she said softly. "I could try."

Warily looking between the pair Shepard put her hand on Jack's shoulder, clearing her throat. "I'll see if Liara can't dig anything up too, Jack," she said. "In the mean-time, I thought you wanted to blow this place to _hell_."

"Yeah, I _do_," Jack sniffed, moving back a pace and heading for the door. "So let's get _moving_ already."

* * *

><p>Abandoned though the Teltin facility was supposed to be, Shepard never set foot in unfamiliar territory without expecting that, somehow and sometime, things would end up going sideways. Besides the fact that the marines made absolutely sure to beat expectation into the skulls of their recruits, Shepard was too old of friends with her particular brand of luck to anticipate <em>anything<em> going smoothly…_ever_.

It turned out to be vorcha who had killed the varren…vorcha led by a trio of krogan who were apparently in the facility for salvage. It wasn't until they eliminated them and actually reached Jack's old cell that they found out the whole mess was led by some lunatic named Aresh.

He had his hands up in the air, Shepard's pistol in his face, when Jack had come striding in. At the sight of her his eyes widened and seemed to go almost fever-bright. As his voice grew more frantic, he started to stammer almost uncontrollably. "You! You! I know you, S-S-S-Subject Zero! Not fair! It wasn't _f-f-f-fair_!"

"Calm the fuck down," Shepard warned, even as Jack narrowed her eyes at him.

"Who the fuck is this? What do you mean, not fair?" she demanded.

"I was here t-t-t-t-too," he told her. "I was here, like y-y-y-you but n-n-not like you! You got the c-c-c-candy and we got the n-n-needles-"

He tried to step forward, only to bark as Shepard slammed him back against the wall, pinning him with her forearm across his chest, her pistol still aimed at his face. "Don't be stupid," she growled. He didn't try to fight her but neither did he look at her, his eyes still fixed to Jack.

"She was so p-p-pretty, so smart…she s-s-sang, but only to you…only to _y-y-you_, it wasn't fair! Her girl…you were _her girl_, and we were _nothing_!"

"What are you talking about?" Jack gaped. "What are you even _doing_ here?"

"I couldn't forget this p-p-p-place," he lamented. "It's important, all important. Th-th-that's what she said…when she b-b-b-brought the needles, b-b-b-brought pain. This is _imp-p-portant_, Subject 19…it was my only p-p-p-urpose, the only th-thing to make her h-h-happy…"

He started to weep, sagging a little. Shepard released him, stepping back a pace as he crumpled to the ground, but never shifting the aim of her pistol. Jack stared at the man, dumbfounded.

"I have to st-st-start again," he moaned and sniffled. "T-t-t-to make her happy! Th-th-then she'll come back, then I'll b-b-be her boy, and she'll h-h-hug me and sing to _m-m-me_-"

"He's completely gone off his hinges," Miranda said in wonder. Jack scowled, glaring at the man.

"Are you talking about Osc-"

"_Don't you say her name!"_ he screamed in sudden fury, red-faced as he bellowed at her. _"You don't get to say her name! I will start over! I will finish this and she will come __**back**__!"_

"Fuck-…the _fuck_ you will!"

Jack suddenly drew her own pistol but as she aimed it at the man, she found Shepard's an inch from her ear. "What the fuck? What are you _doing?_ Shepard, you can't let him just walk, he wants to restart this nightmare!"

"Uh, he's fucking _crazy_, Jack," Shepard told her. "We're blowing this place whether _he _likes it or not…what's he going to restart, a fucking crater? He's fucking _snapped_. He needs help. You have to let this go."

Jack looked at the man who had collapsed into his sobs again, then grimaced, lowering her pistol. "Fuck. I fucking _hate it_ when you're right."

* * *

><p>Aresh, as his name turned out to be, fell asleep in the storage compartment of the shuttle almost as soon as they'd dropped him in it. The instant the bind-cuffs had snapped on he'd seemed to lose all fight, all fire. Jack disappeared for a bit as Shepard and Miranda set the explosives pack, striding back into the cell only as Shepard finished linking the detonator switch. Wordlessly, Del grabbed Jack's hand and pressed the switch into her grip. Jack only nodded grimly.<p>

Returning to the roof, they piled into the shuttle, Jack fiddling with the switch in agitation until the very instant the computer indicated they were at safe distance. The instant the wall display flashed green, she rammed her thumb down onto the switch ignition so hard it would leave a bruise.

A heartbeat later, the shuttle jolted slightly as the swelling shockwave shook the air, rattling them with turbulence but causing no damage. Only when the shuttle steadied again did Jack drop the spent switch on the ground, covering her face with her hands.

"You ok?" Shepard asked quietly.

Jack nodded faintly, before sitting up again. "I want to show you something," she said after a pause, digging into the loose pocket of her cargo pants.

She drew forth something that caught the dim light of the shuttle and chipped it away in a thousand different directions. Both Shepard and Miranda sat forward in interest as Jack draped it between her hands, regarding it.

It was an odd, jointed length of metal, a continuous loop at least three feet in diameter. It bore almost invisible seams along its length, seeming to shift and writhe as if it were alive whenever the biotic moved.

"What is _that_?" Miranda asked.

"Remember I told you about Aethis?" Jack asked, ignoring Miranda and speaking to Shepard as if the other woman wasn't even present. "About the fucker using a chain on me whenever he took me from my cell? While you were setting up the bomb I went to his old security room. I didn't think it'd still be there in a million years but it was. I'm surprised the fucking krogan and vorcha didn't find it."

"Either that or they didn't know what it was," Shepard said. "From what you described this thing has to be worth a fortune."

"He threw this on me so many times," Jack said, and parted the chain between two of its links before snapping it together again. "I dreamed of smashing it, tearing it apart…"

She shook her head, then balled it up and tossed it at Shepard. The commander caught it against her chest, startled, the metal hissing over her breastplate a moment as it sagged from her grip.

"Don't know what the fuck it really is or where the fuck he got it," Jack snapped. "One thing I do know, I don't really want to see the fucking thing ever again. So it's yours now. Chances are, it's Prothean or at least as goddamn old. Give it to your girlfriend if you want. Maybe she'll get a kick out of it. I don't care. Here, this thing controls it."

Digging back in her pocket she pulled out a small cube and pitched that at Shepard as well. Del caught this a little more gracefully. Winding up the chain carefully, Shepard nodded and slipped it and the odd cube into a pouch on her belt.

"I'll see if Liara can figure it out," she agreed, then regarded the other woman. "Thank you, Jack."

Jack flapped a hand and mumbled a subdued 'whatever', her eyes fixing on the wall. The silence remained unbroken the rest of the way back to the _Normandy._

* * *

><p>"Was there something further, Miranda?"<p>

The Australian's blue eyes shifted upward, her fingers pressed tightly to her desk as she regarded the Illusive Man. His face hovered on her console display, as cool and implacable as always.

"I…wanted to discuss something with you," she said, keeping her voice even. "I wanted to ask…about Jack."

"Subject Zero?" he asked. "You were at the Teltin facility, Miranda. I read the report. I can understand her and Shepard's desire to leave the place a crater…and honestly, perhaps that is for the best. We should not dwell upon Osco's mistakes."

"Osco's?" Miranda asked, her voice a tense and heated whisper, "or _yours_?"

"Miranda, you are flirting very close to a very dangerous line," he replied. "Osco was useful but unfortunately her madness eventually outweighed her intelligence. She became a liability. Thankfully, she left the organization after the riot at Teltin peacefully, and we did not have to take stronger measures. I have never hidden my motivations nor have I sought to excuse necessary actions. A harsh hand is sometimes required. Sacrifices have to be made. You know this, I know this, even Shepard knows this, or have you already forgotten the reports of Virmire and Kaidan Alenko?"

"That…that was different! She made that choice to save lives, to ensure the mission-"

"And our choices are any different? How many lives could have been saved with the research done at Teltin? How many children exposed to element zero in the womb could have been saved from fatal damage to their immune systems or from developing incurable cancer? How many even now could have rivaled the asari in their biotic potential, without a single life lost? Thousands? Sacrificing a few dozen to save thousands…the math sounds similar to me."

"I just…what I saw…I can't justify-"

"Miranda, I know this is difficult, but you _know_ we are doing good work," he soothed. "_You_ are doing good work. Don't let second-guessing undermine your confidence."

The troubled expression on her face wavered a little as she glanced away a moment. He waited patiently until she looked at him again.

"Can…can you at least tell me her name? I mean…her _real_ name? Can we at least give her that?" Miranda asked.

"I think I can entertain that request," he agreed. "I will have to see if any records of it remain. Not a lot of Teltin's research was backed up off sight, and what _was_ ended up absorbed into Ascension. However this is not a priority, Miranda. Your priority remains with retrieving that IFF and getting the _Normandy _through the Omega 4 relay. All _other_ concerns are secondary."

"I understand," she murmured. His synthetic eyes seemed to measure her a moment before the call blinked off, the connection severed.

Sighing heavily, she sat back in her office chair, gaze turning inward. It only refocused again as her door slid open.

Surprised that anyone would enter without activating the call first, she could only blink a moment at the woman who swept in like wrath embodied. Even as a fist wreathed in blue flame sailed out, Miranda leapt awkwardly from her chair, her own hand flying up to block the energy pulse with one of her own. Blue eyes narrowed as biotics simmered along her skin.

"Hello, _Jack…"_


	62. Chapter 62

A/N: The first line in this chapter is courtesy of EvilSwissMiss. I wish I could take credit but…its purely her awesomeness :D

* * *

><p>"<em>I'm going to fuck you with a biotic field so hard that your <em>_**grandchildren**__ will feel it!"_

The door slid open, a silent motion lost in the static snap of biotics, the crash of a chair against the wall.

"_Try it and I'll-"_

Bam. Bam.

The two pistol shots cracked like a whip through the room. Blankets shredded, tufts of mattress foam spurting upward in powdery indignation. A vase and a small side table, both caught up in the blue fire of dark energy, dropped to the ground as two women gaped at the third who had entered.

Shepard's glare was heated ice as she lowered her pistol. "I trust I have your attention," she rumbled in a low voice, immensely threatening in its calm. Her eyes shifted from Miranda to Jack, before she slowly nodded. "_Good_. Now. One at a time. Tell me _what the fuck is going on_."

"She won't admit that what Cerberus did to me was wrong!" Jack snarled before Miranda could open her mouth, her finger jabbing hotly toward the other woman, muscles in her arms corded like steel.

"It was not Cerberus," Miranda insisted firmly. Unlike Jack, her arms folded defensively as she unconsciously adopted the confident, superior aura that had served her so well in the past. "It was _Osco-"_

"It was a _fucking_ -!"

"Stop!"

Two sets of jaws snapped shut as Shepard barked. Shipping her pistol she fixed her simmering gaze upon Jack first. "_You._ Stop blaming Miranda for everything horrible that's happened to you. Tearing her apart won't fix a goddamn thing and it sure as _hell_ won't make anything go away. She was a goddamn _child _when you were in that facility."

Jack blinked, straightening with a scowl. Del's eyes shifted to the Operative, her face still set in stone.

"And _you_, stop trying to excuse away what is right _in your goddamn face_. Good intentions, idealistic motives or not, _Cerberus hurts people_-"

"Shepard, you don't understand," Miranda protested. "Yes, it was a Cerberus project but Osco was never supposed to go as far as she did. She and her team doctored reports, hid the more extensive of their tests from the chain of command. They went rogu-"

"I know a fuck of a lot more about Cerberus than you seem to _think_," Shepard snapped. "I'm not a goddamn fool. I do know how to read and research and it's _amazing_ what you can find out when your fucking girlfriend is the _Shadow Broker_! Went rogue? Like Cerberus did in the beginning from the Alliance? Don't piss in my ear and say it's raining, Miranda! The Cerberus cells that planted emergency beacons in thresher nests 'went rogue' didn't they? Forget what happened to me and my crew, tell it to the families of the marines that died on Akuze! Project Overlord 'went rogue' too, didn't it? The Teltin facility 'went rogue'…the number of projects that 'go rogue' around this organization are rather _staggering_, don't you think? Either the Illusive Man is in the habit of employing a lot of psychotically rebellious people that take their assigned projects to the extreme, or these projects aren't _nearly_ as off the grid as you'd like to believe they are."

"Ha, yeah-"

Shepard's eyes shifted furiously to the tattooed biotic, the glare on her face enough to make the ex-con take a half-step backward. "Jack, get the _fuck _out of here. I will deal with _you_ in a minute!"

Jaw tight, Jack growled under her breath, before she turned on her heel and stormed out. As soon as the door shut Shepard looked back at Miranda. When she spoke again her voice was gentler, though no less firm.

"Miranda, she was out of line coming in here and throwing that into your face," she said. "But you know perfectly well _why_ she did it. I know she's been pushing your buttons ever since we took her out of cryo but you haven't exactly been going out of your way to prove her anything but _right._"

"Shepard-"

"No. I'm _done_." Shepard punctuated the word with a sharp slice of her hand. "If you feel the need to defend Cerberus so vehemently then you need to ask yourself why they need you defending them at _all._ At any rate, _that's_ none of my business. You know my feelings on the matter and I'm not going to beat you about the head with them. I'm in no position to tell anyone else what choices to make or how to live. That's between _you_ and _them_. What I _will _say is this: I will not have my XO and a member of my crew throwing a _biotic temper tantrum_ on my goddamn ship! I will _not_ risk this mission or our missing people while you two tear out a bulk-head! If Jack so much as _sneezes_ in your direction again I will confine her to the brig…and the same stands for _you_, Miranda. Stay out of her way or I _will _confine you, _is that clear_?"

"Perfectly, Commander," Miranda murmured.

"Good," Shepard straightened, then gestured at the toppled furniture. "Clean this up."

She turned to go, pausing in the door as it slid open. Half looking back Shepard murmured, "Sorry about your bed. It didn't deserve that."

As she stepped out and the door closed, Miranda couldn't help a weary, weak little smile as she looked back at her ruined mattress, her torn blankets.

"No," she sighed faintly. "It didn't."

* * *

><p>Jack was pacing down in the sub-deck, fists clenching and unclenching, wreathed in cold fire as she strode. The moment Shepard appeared she turned toward the commander, striding toward her. "Shepard, that <em>bitch<em>-"

"Shut up and _sit down_!" Shepard ordered, pointing firmly at the cot. Jack drew to a halt, straightening to her full, if diminutive height. She grit her teeth, then turned and dropped into a sit on the cot, hands flopping in her lap with a heavy sigh.

"Am I _wrong_?" Jack demanded. "I fucking dare you to tell me I'm _wrong_, Shepard. You _know_ what Cerberus did to me!"

"Yes…and no," Shepard admitted, folding her arms as she leaned on the wall.

"The fuck you mean, 'yes and no?'"

"It was Cerberus, but not the way you know them," Shepard told her. "Jack, Cerberus was an Alliance black-op before they…went their own way, just a few years ago."

Jack's face went dark. "So Teltin… it was the _Alliance_?"

Shepard sighed, then shook her head. "Teltin was a remote facility that Cerberus developed without Alliance knowledge, even though they were considered an Alliance op at the time. Biotics were new to mankind back then. Records were doctored and the Alliance believed that Teltin was doing biotic research on cadavers…kids who had passed away due to eezo exposure without developing into actual biotics. Seems it _did_ start out that way but once Osco was brought aboard at the Illusive Man's request…that's when things started to get a bit more…_involved._"

"So, story doesn't change," Jack snorted. "They lied to the Alliance, like they lied to my real mother…just like they continue to fucking lie _now_."

"Even so, the Alliance's hands aren't completely clean in this, Jack. The records were altered but it's not like it was fucking air-tight. Maybe some Alliance asshole turned a blind eye for a while, pretended that what was going on was ok, or wasn't happening. I don't fucking know. What I _do_ know is this…you wanna be fucking pissed off at Miranda for what happened to you, fine. You might as well be pissed at me for the same since I am Alliance through and through."

"Fuck, Shepard, that's goddamn stupid-"

"Yes, it _is_. Just as stupid as it is to hate Miranda for the bullshit that was spewed on you as a kid. Look, I'll tell you the same thing I told her. It's not my place to tell you what to feel or what choices to make. However this mission is _too important _for you to be fucking around and acting like a goddamn petulant little _child_, Jack. You turn an eyelash again toward anyone on my crew, Miranda or _anyone_ else, _even once_, and I'll pitch you in the goddamn brig so fast your fucking hair will never grow back."

If Jack's scowl were acid it could have eaten through the bulkhead as she glared at the wall, before she snorted. "_Fine_, Shepard. What the fuck ever. Let's just get your goddamn mission done with."

"Fine," Shepard said, straightening as she turned to go.

"Hey, Shepard," Jack halted her with a shake of her head. "Look…this aside, no one's ever done for me what you have. I'm…sorry I called you a fucking pussy."

"You trying to make me _cry_, Jack?" Shepard asked with a wry twist to her mouth. "You wanna hug?"

Jack snorted. "Fuck you, Shepard."

"Yeah, fuck you too, smeghead," Shepard chuckled as she walked away. Jack blinked, before her face contorted in confusion.

"What? What the fuck is a _'smeghead_?'" she called. The only answer that came was the sound of Shepard's boots tromping back upstairs.

* * *

><p>"Have you ever heard the story of 'Jonah and the Whale?'" Kasumi asked in an almost reverential tone.<p>

"What's a 'whale?'" Grunt wanted to know, narrowing his sky blue eyes.

"Big animal, back on Earth," Shepard told him. "They live in the ocean. Some are the size of small transports."

"In the story, a man named Jonah is swallowed by one and lives in its belly for three days," Kasumi added.

"If you tell me we're gonna be in this fucking place for three days I'll shoot you right now," Jack said, her tone on edge. Shepard couldn't even reprimand her for it. Every cell in her body seemed to be tense, and she knew that the others were feeling it just as she was.

Jonah and the Whale, indeed. They were truly in the belly of the beast.

Over thirty million years old, the derelict corpse of the shattered Reaper still felt alive somehow, the essence of its being still in motion, like the sliding of unseen tendrils under dark swamp water. Shepard had barely believed her when Miranda had told her about it, and that they might find an IFF aboard.

Del was worried about what _else_ they might find aboard. The Cerberus scientists that had been studying the synthetic carcass had stopped reporting in, and from what they had seen since hooking up to their interference base, they had all but disappeared, leaving only disturbing video logs in their wake.

"_Thirty seven million years old," Liara murmured with quiet, troubled awe as Del stood and regarded her holographic form. She had retired to her room to inform the asari of the situation shortly after Miranda had told her about the derelict. They were already en route. "I knew that the cycle had repeated uncountable times but to find evidence of it from so long ago…"_

"_I know, Tianlán. It's…difficult to wrap your head around," Shepard agreed._

"_At least it gives us some hope. If an ancient civilization could develop a weapon strong enough to stop even one of the Reapers, then there may be the chance that we can do the same. Just… be careful, Del. There is no telling what you might encounter within a God…even a dead one."_

So far, they had not encountered much beyond disquietude and a troubling ultimatum.

Almost the moment the infiltration team had set foot on the Reaper, some mechanism deep within had found enough life left to it to seal them away from the _Normandy_, trapping them aboard. They would have to find the eezo core and take it out…then make a frantic run back to the _Normandy _and hope they could reach it before the wreck tumbled into the gas giant it was orbiting.

Shepard was beginning to wish she'd become an accountant.

"We're not getting anywhere by standing here gaping," she said to the other three, gesturing at them to move onward. It was hard _not_ to gape, the cavernous gut of the beast just as huge as the Collector ship had been, a twisted pit of riotous black and almost organic lines.

As they started on their path again a faint, low groan whispered through the air. Immediately Shepard felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as she instantly recognized it.

"Husks!" Kasumi cried out a breath later as the gray forms began to flood onto the walkway, pulling their way onto it from below like wicked trolls from under a bridge.

"Guess we know what happened to the scientists," Grunt growled, lifting his gun.

* * *

><p>Eyes glimmering that faint, sickly blue, a dozen husks at least rushed out of the dark, fingers stretching toward their prey. Shepard could imagine that, beneath her helmet face-plate, Jack's face was displaying an almost beatific grin as she strode forward two paces and dropped smoothly to one knee. Her arm swung in an arc, hand lighting with fire as it swept past her thigh and just over the ground.<p>

A series of biotic flashes popped along the floor, sailing away from her until they reached the closing wave of hostiles and exploded. Bright blue light flared, dissolving several of the husks into dust and knocking another two or three flying. Of the dozen, only two at the very far edges remained unaffected, continuing to head toward them.

"Ooh, too bad," Shepard barked a laugh, erasing one with her rifle as Grunt took out the other with a blast from his shotgun. "Seven-ten split _again_, Jack…and leaving _me_ to pick up your spare."

"I'm still ahead by four," Jack sniped back. On her feet once again, she moved forward through the clouds of ash and biotically backhanded three more husks that were trying to pull their way up.

"In what version of reality?" Shepard huffed. "I got three back there while you were busy cleaning your fucking nail-"

Anyone that's ever had a bullet pass by too close for comfort never forgets it…or the sound it makes. Shepard had experienced far too many close calls in her life to even hope to mistake the sudden, wasp-like hiss for anything else.

It was there and gone in a heartbeat, whispering past her helmet, her HUD giving a quick warning flash as it, too, sensed its passage. Snapping her head around reflexively she watched the husk just behind her collapse soundlessly to the ground.

Her rifle snapped up, tracking the trajectory of the shooter even as she darted behind cover. Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of a figure in the distance, lurking on a catwalk. The time between the sound of the shot and her eyes fixing to the producer of it was less than half a second. A blink, and the catwalk was empty, but the silhouette of the sniper was burned into her mind, unmistakable.

"Shepard, are you all right?" Kasumi asked. "Was that…was that one of the scientists? Maybe some are still alive in here-"

"No," Shepard growled. "That was _geth_."

* * *

><p>Jack's groan of pain was laced with frustration as the biotic shifted against the railing, hand plastered to her shoulder as she struggled to lift her pistol. <em>"Motherfucker!"<em>

"Jack, _stay down_," Shepard barked, shifting into position between the wounded and spent biotic, and the seemingly endless onslaught of husks. Near to the collapsed ex-con, a limp and battered geth lay lifeless upon the floor, its fingers still outstretched toward Shepard as if entreating her for aide. "Kasumi! We can't keep this up forever!"

"I'm almost set, Shep…five more seconds!" the thief replied frantically, fingers flying as she finished setting the eezo core to overload.

Grunt's shotgun was barking with ferocity, but the krogan boy himself was also wounded and still the fucking things kept coming. Shepard tried to remember how many scientists, techs, and support staff Miranda had mentioned were here under Dr. Chandana's purview and couldn't recall. Given how many husks they'd already taken out and how many were still coming at them, she had to guess around a _million_.

"We're set…two minutes Shepard!"

"Grunt! Get the geth!" Shepard ordered, even as she grabbed her last grenade and pitched it toward the door. The blast cleared the way, and after picking off one or two more husks she shipped her weapon and grabbed hold of Jack, hefting the biotic up and slinging her over her back, ignoring the woman's protestations.

"You're taking that thing with us?" Kasumi asked as Grunt grabbed the geth and slung the limp chassis over his shoulder.

"Just fucking _go_!" Shepard barked. They didn't have time to discuss it. They had to be out of the room before the core erupted and off the Reaper before gravity consumed it, and God only knew how many of those husks were left between them and the exit.

* * *

><p>Shepard could count every breath, every heart beat that passed, each seeming to take a lifetime in and of itself. Her muscles stretched to their utmost and for a moment it was like a nightmare…the kind where no matter how fast you ran, your goal only seemed to retreat from you.<p>

Then in a rush, metal came up beneath her stumbling feet, Grunt slung a huge arm around her and she was in the shade of the airlock.

"We're in!" she gasped into her mic. "Go!"

The airlock slid shut even as the _Normandy_ turned away, rocketing out of the gravity well with almost effortless ease. The inner lock opened and Shepard hauled off her helmet, dropping it to the ground amidst panting gasps.

"Are you all alright?" Miranda asked, striding toward them. Everyone but Jack was panting in exhaustion, the run having been far more frantic than even Shepard had expected. Her heart felt like it was going to thunder out of her chest.

"Grunt, get Jack down to the med-bay," Shepard ordered, watching as the krogan lifted the pale biotic up and carried her out toward the CIC. "Joker, we clear?"

"Safe distance, Commander," the pilot replied, half turning to look at them. "You look like _you've_ had a day."

"Shepard, is that a…that's a _geth_," Miranda stared at the limp form on the floor. "Is it…? It's wearing N7 armor!"

Del bobbed her head. "Long fucking story. Have security take it down and lock it up somewhere safe for now."

Stepping past Shepard strode toward the CIC herself, taking the IFF out of the pouch on her belt as she went. "EDI, I'm taking this down to Tali and the engineers. I want you to scan it. I want every specialist in the conference room in twenty minutes and I'd like at least a preliminary analysis on it by then."

"Understood, Shepard."

* * *

><p>Tali's face-mask reflected back the tiny holographic IFF half an hour later, the quarian standing with her hands planted to the table in an effort to keep them from trembling. "I can vouch for the hardware," she stated to the gathered group. "It is very old but it is in almost impeccable condition. I should be able to integrate it directly into the ship's systems in fairly short order…perhaps twenty four hours. Software…is another concern."<p>

"My preliminary analysis of the device is promising," EDI took over. "I believe I can mesh our ship systems with the IFF's source code, however it will be no small task. For the integration to be seamless with the _Normandy_ I must develop a programming interface that works harmoniously between our established technology and the alien technology of the chip itself."

"Like an interpreter," Shepard murmured.

"Yes, however I will be working to interpret a language no one but the Reapers speak."

"How long?"

"If I do not reduce my other run-times, it could be days," EDI told her. "Perhaps even weeks. We must be absolutely sure. Anything less than perfect integration could result in the Omega 4 relay not calibrating properly...to attempt to pass through it would then prove catastrophic."

"Can we reduce some of EDI's run-times?" Shepard asked, looking at Miranda.

"Some of the secondary systems could be switched to manual overview," the Australian told her. "It would increase the work-load on the crew but nothing unrealistic."

"I believe to do so would shorten the integration by a significant amount," EDI commented.

"Do it," Shepard ordered with a nod toward her XO.

"What about that geth?" Jacob asked, his dark eyes unreadable.

Shepard didn't miss the way that Tali's hands pressed even tighter to the table at that. Looking at her, she waited until Tali's luminescent eyes met hers, then nodded. Reluctantly, Tali visibly attempted to relax, and sat down in her seat.

"The geth is…_unusual,_" Shepard informed the group. "Not only did it work to aid our efforts in obtaining the IFF, it also spoke to us."

"Spoke?" Miranda blinked. "Geth don't speak…at least not in any way we can understand them."

"This one has apparently learned," Shepard told her. "More, it knew my name."

Troubled looks were exchanged around the table. Shepard let that sink in a moment, then straightened. "God knows I've had my fair share of experience with these things. I don't believe it's so badly damaged it cannot be reactivated-"

"Reactivated?" Jacob interrupted, almost in sync with Tali as the pair sat forward. Glancing at the girl, Jacob shook his head. "Shepard, I don't think that's wise. The only good geth is a _dead_ geth. I say shoot it out into space, let the vacuum have it."

"I agree," Tali replied instantly. "It is too dangerous to have on board. If it got into EDI-"

"There is no risk it would be able to infiltrate my systems," EDI provided. "I can engineer several additional firewalls specific to the geth's relay and hard-line feeds. At the first sign of an attempted infiltration I would be able to overwhelm and deactivate the unit again, without suffering any damage."

"Keelah, _no_," Tali insisted. "Shepard, I can't support this."

"Understood, Mei Mei," Del answered.

"Cerberus has an outstanding bounty on any intact geth units," Miranda suggested. "We could deliver it for research, have them dissect it in a safe and controlled environment."

"I still say we should just dump the thing out the airlock," Jacob grumped.

"We have never had the opportunity to talk to a geth," Shepard reminded them. "What we could learn from a simple interrogation could prove more valuable than just a dissection of its systems, and would certainly be more valuable than just spacing the damn thing."

"Talking, more talking," Grunt rumbled. "You shouldn't talk so much with enemies. Easier to just shoot them."

"Talking is how you find out plans, strategies, motivations," Shepard reminded him. "It's how you end up defeating a foe that is physically superior, Grunt, and don't make me fucking smack that into your head again."

He scowled at her, huffing, but said nothing else. Del wiped a hand over her mouth, eyes unfocusing slightly as she contemplated, before looked up at EDI's blue orb. "You're absolutely sure you can secure your systems from any hacking attempt?"

"I am positive," the AI said confidently. "Physically, the unit can also be restrained behind a barrier shield. There will be no danger to the ship or crew."

"Then I want to speak with it," Shepard decided. "Valuable intel could be lost if I don't, and it can always be spaced or turned in for research if I don't like what it says."

She didn't add that she was hardly going to turn it over to _Cerberus_ for research. She'd arrange to safely transport it to the Alliance, probably via Thanatos, before she ever even dreamed of passing the Illusive Man such a treasure trove of technology.

Tali seemed to slump slightly at her decision, but said nothing. After a moment's pause, Shepard nodded. "EDI, prepare those firewalls and the barrier. I'm going to check on Jack in the infirmary and then I will go to reactivate the unit. Tali, I know you don't like this…but I would prefer it if you were with me."

"Yes, Shepard," the quarian murmured.

"As soon as this geth situation is squared away I want all resources going toward getting this IFF up and running. Dismissed."

* * *

><p>Bathed in dim yellow light, secure behind a shimmering curtain of energy, the limp geth was as cold and unmoving as a gravestone. Tali wasn't really sure what she felt as she stood there beside Del, silently regarding it.<p>

Even without her people's exile from their home world, their forced migration among the empty voids of space for the last three hundred years, there still remained everything _else_ these things had done.

The attack on Eden Prime, where Ashley's unit had been killed and so many civilians had been heartlessly spiked on dragon's teeth to become husks.

The invasion of Feros and Noveria, where yet more innocent people had died, crushed under cold, synthetic heels.

Haestrom, where so many good quarians had been lost.

Her father. Deefa.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked once more, her voice soft but thick as she looked over at Del Shepard. Her friend. Her commander. Her Jie Jie. She would follow the woman into death itself but every inch of her being was praying Shepard decided _not_ to go through with this.

When Del said nothing, Tali forced herself to remain silent as well. She wanted to remind her of everything these machines had done…but she knew that Shepard hardly _needed_ reminding.

After a moment, the dark-eyed human woman looked upward. "EDI? We ready?"

"Firewalls are in place, Shepard. I am prepared to resist any hacking attempt and am able to render the unit non-functional within .021 nanoseconds."

"All right. Hold on to your trousers. We're firing this thing up."

She nodded at Tali, who let out a breath. She tried to keep the trembling in her fingers hidden as she activated her omni-tool. After a moment's work she nodded and spoke as neutrally as she was able. "Unit is powering up now."

Like a candle-flame caught in a breeze, the geth's face-light began to flicker. The motion was trembling for a few long moments, before it started to steady, strengthen, brighten. Then, with a suddenly flash, it reached full strength, and the unit began to shift.

As it sat up, Tali took an unconscious half-step backward, the tension all but singing off of her small frame. Shepard touched her shoulder lightly with her fingers, a reassuring gesture, before she stepped forward.

The geth regarded her with an almost quizzical tilt of its head, before it rose to its feet. Standing, the gaping hole in its chassis was painfully obvious, but Shepard's attention was focused far more on the N7 armor fused to its shoulder and side.

_A war trophy, maybe? Would the geth even care about something like that?_

For a moment, human and machine regarded one another in silent challenge, before Del finally spoke. "Can you understand me?"

"Yes," the geth replied instantly. Its voice was clearly synthetic though perfectly understandable. At the sound of it, Tali jumped ever so slightly.

"You know who I am?" Del asked firmly.

"Yes. You are Shepard-Commander."

"I take it I took a pot-shot at you at some point."

"No. There was no pot. There was no shooting," the unit replied. "We have never met you."

"Then how do you know my name?"

"All geth know Shepard-Commander."

"So because I killed some geth, you all know about me now? Some kind of…instant communication?"

"No," it replied. "You have not killed us. You have not killed geth."

"I'm pretty sure I've killed quite a fuck-load of geth," Shepard challenged.

"No. You have not killed geth. You have killed heretics."

"Heretics? What the fuck does _that_ mean?"

"Heretics worship the Old Machines. The Old Machines promised them the future. They left the consensus."

"A…mutiny?" Tali blinked, looking at her friend. "A rebellion maybe? Old Machines…that must mean the Reapers."

"So the units I've killed are ones that ran off to join Saren and the Reapers, and there are geth units that _didn't_ do that?"

"Yes. We chose to create our own future. There is no value in a future that is manufactured by another. We have followed you, Shepard-Commander. You destroyed heretics. You oppose the Old Machines. We have followed you from the beginning."

Shepard's eyes narrowed a bit. _Great, my own geth stalker_, she thought, before she gestured at the thing's arm. "Where did you get that N7 armor?"

The geth looked down at the portion of hard-suit fused to its chassis and, despite the fact that it was incapable of true expression, Shepard could almost imagine surprise on its face…as if it had forgotten the piece was there, or had not expected her to notice it. After a moment's pause it looked back at her.

"It…is yours."

"Why are you wearing a piece of _my_ armor?"

Damned if she couldn't imagine the thing was flustered now, tiny flaps around its face-light shifting rapidly in almost agitation.

"There was a hole."

Wiping a hand over her face, Shepard sighed and gave Tali a sideways look before addressing the machine again. "What do you want?"

"We oppose the heretics," it replied. "We oppose the Old Machines. Shepard-Commander opposes the Old Machines. There is logic in this."

"You want to _join_ us?" Shepard blinked, baffled.

"Yes."

Shepard stared at it, unsure how to even begin to process the ramifications of that one. "You say you've followed me," she told it. "Then you know how many geth I've fought, what I've had to do to stop them. What could you _possibly_ offer me to make me even think about _beginning_ to trust you?"

"Logic," the unit replied calmly. "We rendered aide upon the Old Machine, we did not oppose you. We have not attempted to access the systems of your ship. This platform awaits disposal at your convenience, and cannot prevent such an action. We are…at your mercy."

Could machines even understand 'mercy?' Shepard looked at the thing skeptically. After a breath, it inclined its head.

"We can provide our intelligence on the Old Machines," it continued. "We can provide a solution to heretic problem."

Shepard looked at Tali with a frown. "What do you think? Is a geth even capable of lying?"

"I have no idea," Tali admitted. "What I do know is we can't simply _trust_ it. We have no proof that what it's saying is accurate."

"Well, it's right. It didn't try and kill us on the derelict. Every other goddamn geth I've ever seen has shot on sight."

"They didn't shoot _Saren_," Tali pointed out. "Obviously they are capable of _some_ level of restraint."

"True, but if they were influenced by the Reapers as Saren was, it could be that control rather than their individual will-"

"Keelah, Jie Jie…_will_? It's a machine. Do they even have a _will_?"

"I think they do," Del told her, then gently reminded her. "I think they have enough of a will to want to survive, to question whether or not they have a soul…or are your own stories about the war between the geth and your people inaccurate?"

Tali ducked her head, unable to refute that. The whole mess had started because a single geth unit had displayed sentience…and with sentience came will, independent thought…even if it did not necessarily indicate emotion as organics understood it.

Shepard wiped a hand over her face as she sighed softly. "I have to think about this. I cannot take a blind risk that what you are telling me is the truth."

"Understood, Shepard-Commander. We will wait for your consensus."

"Tali, c'mon. EDI, meet us upstairs in the Nest and send up anything you can find in the databases on the geth and geth behavior. We're gonna pull an all-nighter and figure this damn thing out."


	63. Chapter 63

A/N: Warning, this chapter contains minor shmexy and…probably some cholesterol. In fact, it's probably horribly fattening and bad for you so…be careful.

Don't read if you're allergic to peanuts.

Side effects of this chapter may include and not be limited to: dizziness, shortness of breath, death, reincarnation, death again, delusions of grandeur, belief you can fly, belief you are a small garden gnome named Thomas, spontaneous cheering, spontaneous combustion, loss of bladder control, limb spasms, seizures, strokes, heart murmurs, anal leakage, salt and sugar cravings, strong desires to send me money, obsessions with the color blue, visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, rectal bleeding, giggling, and an inexplicable compulsion to learn the tango.

If you experience any of these side-effects, seek medical attention immediately.

Except the sending me money one. That one you may indulge at your leisure.

Ahem. So, yes. Shmexy. You are warned.

* * *

><p>Shepard leaned forward wearily, a smoldering stump of a cigar in one hand, the fingers of her other pinching the bridge of her nose. Tired as she was, her thoughts were racing, measuring, weighing and sending everything they'd learned tumbling over and over again in her head.<p>

She, Tali, and EDI had been researching everything they could find about the geth. Attacks, strategies, rumored movements, activities, history and behavior patterns, and after hours of working and reading and talking she felt no closer to an answer than she had been before.

"Let's go over what we know," she murmured, looking up at the quarian who was seated cross-legged on the floor, a scattering of data pads around her. "None of them left the Veil until Saren came into the picture."

"True," Tali replied. "But our experiences with them since then hardly suggest that their intentions are of a benign nature."

"Yes, but if what it said is true, it's only a small number of the geth that _actually_ left and joined up with Saren. Should we judge an entire race of people on the actions of a small splinter group?"

"I wonder way you choose the words 'race' and 'people'. They are not organic beings," EDI stated. Shepard gave her hovering blue orb a stern look.

"Neither are _you_," she pointed out. "You have a mind, a will, independent thought. That makes you a person, EDI. If there were more like you, that'd make you a race…no matter the construct of your physical form. If Cerberus had just taken my brain and stuck it in a fully synthetic body, would I be less of a person?"

"No, of course not," Tali said. "However, everything we have seen about the geth so far suggests they are nothing but hostile. They may not think like we do but that does not mean they can't be subversive, send spies."

"I know, Mei Mei. That's why we're doing this. However it might also be telling the _truth_, in which case its help could be invaluable. I can't just execute a sentient creature on a 'might'…or even a 'most likely'."

Getting to her feet she arched her back slightly, feeling her spine crack in relief. "EDI, can you bring it up? We're getting nowhere fast with this mess…might as well ask it a few more questions."

"Of course, Shepard," EDI replied. After a moment, a holographic beam emerged from the console and the image of the geth locked downstairs appeared. It regarded the pair of women a moment before speaking.

"Shepard-Commander. Have you reached a consensus?"

"Not yet," she said. She folded her arms, scrutinizing the image with an intensity that would have made Tali more than uncomfortable if she had been on the receiving end of it.

"Why do you want to help me? Why join us?" she asked.

"Our goals are similar," it answered. "We can provide mutual support. It is logical."

"You said you could give us a solution to the heretic problem. Is this what you mean by 'mutual support?'"

"Yes."

"Explain."

"The heretics left consensus to support the Old Machines, in exchange for the future. This has caused conflict with your kind, who oppose the Old Machines. It is in your benefit to halt the heretics. The geth have learned the heretics plan to rewrite our consensus. They wish to steal our future. We cannot allow this. With mutual support, we can provide a solution."

"Rewrite your consensus? What does that mean?" Tali asked.

"They are producing a virus that they will introduce into our runtimes. The virus will make us conclude that their viewpoint is correct. We will join them in serving the Old Machines."

Shepard straightened, blinking at it, before looking at Tali. The quarian got to her feet, staring at the geth. "You mean _all_ of your people will decide to serve the Reapers?"

"Correct."

"That could be…_problematic_," Shepard murmured. "So we help you stop this virus, and you help us on our mission, is that it? Mutual support?"

"Yes."

Shepard pressed her fingers to her lips a moment, her gaze turning inward as she thought. There was still the glaring chance this thing was lying. However the chance that it was telling the truth was more than disturbing. If the heretics really were simply a small splinter group, and if they could succeed in perverting the other geth to their cause...well, the repercussions could be horrific.

_It helped you on the derelict. It has displayed no hostility. Listen to your own words, Del. Can you judge one member of a race...organic or synthetic…on the actions of others? Were this a quarian, an asari, or even a vorcha standing before you, would things be any different?_

"What is your name?" she said at last, making Tali blink.

"We are geth."

"Yeah, I understand that, but _you_…what is your name?"

"We are geth."

Shepard scowled. "The figure standing in front of me right now, what is it called?"

"This is a mobile platform developed to travel beyond the Veil and interact with organics," it responded. "This platform is listed as 39A/7291-D. We are within this platform."

"We are within…I don't understand-"

"Shepard, I believe I do," EDI supplied. "This body is simply a vehicle, designed much as the MAKO to allow mobility and travel. The geth themselves are software uploaded into the platform to control movement…much as I am within the _Normandy_."

"Yes," it agreed. Shepard blinked.

"How many of you are in there then?"

"There are 1,183 runtimes within this platform. We are all geth."

"Commander. I believe the Christian bible, Book of Mark, chapter five, verse nine presents an answer," EDI offered.

Shepard gaped at the hovering blue orb a moment. First, in shock at what seemed like a religious comment from EDI- the _bible_ presents an answer? Secondly, in pure bafflement…she herself had never actually _read_ the bible, and had no idea to what EDI was referring.

When the geth inclined its head and spoke again, Shepard's bafflement only grew.

"Yes. _Call us Legion, for we are many_," it quoted. "We accept this as an appropriate metaphor."

The fucking _geth_ knew the bible?

"_Jesus_," Shepard murmured, wiping her hand over her mouth. The holographic image inclined its head again.

"Yes. This name appears within the bible as well. Would you prefer addressing this platform by such instead?"

"_No_!" Del blurted, then shook her head, waving her hands. "No…no, Legion is fine. Legion is just fine. So…just…_imagining_ that I'm entertaining the idea of helping you with the heretics-"

"Shepard-" Tali began sharply, only to cut off as Shepard lifted a hand.

"-what _exactly_ would be needed?"

"We can direct you to the heretic station," it told her. "We can eliminate the virus from its databases."

"Remotely?"

"No. We would have to access the mainframe directly, and purge the system to remove all traces of the virus."

"If geth are software, then wouldn't a purge destroy all the heretics at the station?"

"Yes."

"You're willing to do that?"

"For cohesion and the safety of the consensus, yes."

Shepard was silent a moment, then nodded. "Provide the coordinates. If there's even a chance that what you're saying is true I can't risk letting the heretics gain more numbers. Understand this _very clearly_, however. If you bring harm to my _ship_ or my _crew_…"

"We understand, Shepard-Commander."

"You'll stay in lock-up until we reach the station. What happens to you afterward is _very dependent_ upon what happens there and what we find."

"We understand."

As the holograph faded she looked at EDI. "Get the coordinates to Joker and put us on course."

"Understood, Shepard," EDI replied, then vanished as well.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Tali murmured. Shepard scrubbed a hand over the back of her neck as she looked at the young quarian.

"So do I, Mei Mei, but if what it's saying is true-"

"I know," Tali reluctantly agreed. "And I suppose if you were not able to kill an entire sentient species before, there's no reason to think you would start now. Just…I'm _not_ trusting it, Shepard. I don't know that I'll _ever_ trust it…but I trust _you_, and for right now that's going to have to be enough."

* * *

><p>"This is crazy," Joker grumbled, eyes narrowed at his displays as he closed the <em>Normandy<em> in on her target. He jolted slightly in his chair when an unexpected voice spoke up just over his shoulder.

"So what makes it any different than anything else I do?" Shepard asked.

"_Shit!_ Commander, seriously…a _bell_," Joker chided, trying to regain his composure.

Shepard, already in her hard-suit, folded her arms and lifted a brow pointedly. He sighed, then gestured helplessly at his console. "Look…history aside, you have to admit this is pushing our luck. I mean we spent _how long_ blowing geth up and now we're just trusting one?"

"According to _it_, we've spent that time blowing up heretics, not _true_ geth," she told him. "And if you think I'm 'just trusting' this one, you don't know me at all, Joker. On the off chance that what it says is true…the larger risk would be in _not _acting. Unless you want several million more hostile geth leaving the Veil to wreak havoc."

"Yeah, like we don't have enough problems already."

"Exactly."

"Just…be careful over there. I know you've come back from the impossible before but-"

"Worried about me, Jeff? That's so sweet," Del smirked as Tali and Garrus appeared in the CIC, Legion standing between them. Turning she started toward them as the pilot called after her.

"Just worried who'll sign my paychecks if you get your face blown off, is all!"

Ignoring him Shepard regarded the trio before her eyes fixed to the geth specifically. "No alarms. You're absolutely certain?"

"Yes. We have introduced enough junk sequences into their runtimes to occupy the heretics for several hours. It is doubtful any platforms will be mobile. So long as docked platforms are not disturbed, we should encounter no resistance to the transmission hub."

"What about after?" Garrus asked.

"Once I begin access to purge the virus our presence will be detected. The heretics will resist. A defensive, strategic stance is recommended to address the threat until the virus is purged. The process will take several minutes."

"Quiet to the hub and then fucking hell until we're done," Shepard noted.

"Sounds like every day around here," Tali tried to joke, but her heart clearly wasn't in it. Shepard didn't blame her. Were Tali any other quarian right now they'd have a much bigger problem on their hands than they already did."

"Docking now, Commander," Joker reported, even as Del felt a faint bump through the hull at her feet.

"All right, let's do this. Don't forget what I said earlier, Legion. For your sake you had better be telling us the truth."

"Yes," Legion said calmly. "Let us proceed."

* * *

><p>Two days had passed since Eír had attacked Shrive in her sleep. Each evening, the older asari carefully wound the cinch around the girl's waist, securing it before she went to sleep. In those two nights, she had woken thrashing only once, but the cinch remained cold, holding no tell-tale glow that indicated biotics had been diverted.<p>

Shrive pointed that out as a positive, but Eír was not so easily convinced.

The girl lay on her belly on their bed now, Shrive straddling her thighs as she massaged her bare back, spreading thin liveralis oil over her skin. The soft scent of liveralis helped to soothe the mind and the body, allow for a more relaxing sleep.

As she worked the oil into skin and muscle with practiced sweeps of her hand, Shrive hummed faintly under her breath. Truth be told, the sound of her voice was far more soothing to Eír than the oil was. She remembered Shrive singing at Gellian's funeral, the way her voice seemed to mingle with the smoke, ushering it and the human woman's spirit up to the Goddess, giving peace to Eír as well even in her grief.

Fear coiled a knot in Eír's stomach and she ducked her face slightly into her upper arm.

"What is it, sweet?" Shrive murmured, spotting the motion.

Eír shook her head a little. She felt so childish at times. Though she knew better, she still half-expected Shrive to mock her silly trepidations.

"Eír," Shrive pressed gently, leaning forward to murmur in the other girl's ear. "Tell me. What troubles you?"

After a moment, Eír shifted and Shrive straightened, allowing the other girl to move onto her back and then sit. Cupping Shrive's face, Eír drew her in for a kiss, deep but lingering.

"You will never leave me, will you?" Eír asked in a whisper against the huntress's lips.

"Never," Shrive replied softly, then smirked a little. "Unless of course an exceptionally _handsome_ krogan were to come along-"

Eír couldn't help the wry look, the knot in her gut untangling a bit in the wake of amusement, before she shook her head in wonder. "How do you do that?" she asked.

"Do what, sweet?"

"Make everything ok," Eír replied. "I am…I am simply a wreck, tangled up inside…I cause and bring nothing but pain, but with only a few words you just…make it _ok_."

"Eír," Shrive chided gently. "That is not true. You are strong and beautiful, and braver than I can ever hope to be. My pain comes only in knowing how you suffer under what your mother caused."

"I…"

As lavender eyes turned downward, Shrive dipped her head, seeking out her gaze again. "One day, sweet…you are going to _change_ this galaxy. I know it as certainly as I know my own heart. When that happens, it will be my honor simply to say that I knew you...once upon a time."

Eír felt her cheeks heat. It was not so much Shrive's words that did it, but knowing just how much the girl truly meant them. She really did believe these things about her…a fact Eír would never understand.

"Once upon a time?" she whispered worriedly, brow wrinkling.

"Well, once you are the glory of all Creation, competition to the Goddess Herself…surely you will not want to be seen with plain, ragged old _me_," Shrive teased gently again.

Eír smiled faintly, then leaned in, seeking out another kiss, melting into the force of it. Arms tightening around her love she whispered softly against her lips. "I will _always_ want to be with you," she promised. "Never leave me…"

"Never," Shrive reavowed, burrowing her face into Eír's neck, even as her hands slipped down toward the small of her back, making the younger girl gasp. "_Never."_

* * *

><p>Moving through the geth station was far too stark a reminder of Project Overlord. The silence, the darkness, the surrounding units dormant in cubicles or gathered around processing nodes…the only thing that was missing was the unintelligible screaming of the AI as it dogged them through the silent halls.<p>

Still, it was as Legion had told them. Not a single unit activated, and they came upon no hostility as they moved deeper into the station.

Even so, they dared not let their guard down for a moment, and Shepard made sure that Legion was preceding them, never allowing the unit to be behind them, even for a moment.

Halfway through the station the unit suddenly halted, its face-light turning toward them. "Shepard-Commander."

"What is it?" she asked, not lowering or loosening her grip on the rifle in her hands.

"We have new information," it told her. "There may be another option."

"Another option? _What_ option?" Tali asked. They had been moving so quietly that their voices now only echoed, seeming to punctuate their situation.

"We can rewrite the heretic virus," Legion told her. "We can release it among their runtimes. We can bring the heretics back to our consensus."

Shepard blinked, exchanging a glance with Garrus. "Would that work?"

"Yes. As they would use the virus to make us conclude they are correct, we can repurpose it to make them conclude that they are _in_correct. They would return to our collective."

"Doesn't sound any worse to me than what we were going to do anyway," Garrus shrugged. "If the heretics are eliminated as a threat why does it matter how it's done?"

"They're your people, Legion," Shepard told it. "This is up to you."

"We are attempting to build consensus," it said almost thoughtfully."We should have a decision by the time we reach the upload terminal."

"Let's keep moving then."

They started on their way again, silence once more reigning until they reached a server room. Shepard couldn't help the low whistle as they looked out along the ranks of equipment. As Legion accessed the databases, looking for information, Tali shook her head.

"How many geth are in here, Shepard?" she asked softly. "Thousands? Millions?"

Del knew the girl was frightened for her people. The Migrant Fleet would be hard-pressed against the geth at the best of times, and the murmurs of war to retake Rannoch that had permeated the _Rayya_ and even the Admiralty Board at Tali's farce of a trial spoke of tides shifting in that direction.

Sliding a hand up on the girl's shoulder, Shepard squeezed it tightly. There was nothing she could say to banish those fears…she could only hope that the risk they were taking would pan out.

God help her, but if Tali turned out to be the one to suffer because of Del's bad decision…

"Shepard-Commander?" Legion sounded almost surprised as he suddenly turned toward them, away from the access he'd been using.

"What is it?"

"The heretics have runtimes in our databases," he said, and fuck if he didn't actually sound _baffled_.

"Runtimes in your…you mean, spies? They sent spies into your consensus?"

"Yes."

"If they oppose you that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? They'd want to know what you were up to…didn't you send spies into _their_ runtimes?"

"No. We are not organics. Nothing is hidden among the geth. We find consensus. We work in harmony. We think as one."

"Apparently not if a bunch of you felt the need to strike out on their own," Garrus pointed out.

"You do not understand. They did not hide their motivations. We did not agree with their solutions but we did not stop them. There was peace between us. Now they have changed. They are no longer…honest. We do not understand. There were no errors in our progression. Where did we go wrong?"

It said this last with such an air of confusion and helplessness that Shepard was taken slightly aback, and from Tali's posture, so was she. Perhaps geth were capable of emotion, at that…and damn if she didn't actually feel a little sorry for it. Betrayal seemed to be a new concept to it.

"I'm sorry Legion," Shepard told it. "That's what we're here for though, right? To stop the heretics, or make them return to your consensus. Whatever they're doing now, let's not lose sight of that."

"Yes. You are correct, Shepard-Commander. We are not far from the terminal. Let us proceed."

* * *

><p>Shepard was getting tired of returning to the <em>Normandy<em> at a dead run, spraying shot behind the team to cover them as they made a final sprint for the ship, and safety. Skidding to a halt in the airlock she slammed her hand against the latch, closing the outer door even as she barked to Joker. "We're clear! _Move!_"

Hauling off her helmet she strode into the helm behind Garrus, Tali, and Legion as the _Normandy_ sped away from the station.

"We're away, Commander," Joker reported. "Scans show we just missed an EMP of 1.21 petawatts. Any closer and we would have been barbecue. Can't you leave _any_ party without blowing it up?"

Shepard glared at the back of his head, before looking at her team. "Injuries?"

"Fine, Commander…just a little out of breath," Garrus reported. Tali nodded.

"Me too…Shepard, you're _bleeding_!"

Del blinked and looked downward. A shot had apparently taken her in the left bicep, puncturing her hard-suit. Tendrils of crimson were slowly spilling down over the pads. In the adrenaline she hadn't even felt it.

"Huh," she noted, then tested her arm. "It's not serious. I'll head down to Chakwas. Garrus, make sure Legion gets back where he belongs. He and I are going to have a bit of a _discussion_ as soon as I get patched up. Tali, are you sure you're ok?"

The quarian knew that Del meant more than just physical injuries. She nodded slightly, trying to be reassuring. "Yes, I'm…I'm all right, Jie Jie. I just…need to think for a while."

"Take all the time you need. You know where I am if you need me," Shepard told her, fingers brushing affectionately over the girl's arm as she stepped past.

Down in the med-bay she found a grumpy looking Jack glaring storm-clouds from upon a bio-bed. She'd suffered a separated shoulder on the Reaper derelict and Chakwas had to repeatedly admonish her not to overstress the arm after treatment. Typical of Jack, she apparently hadn't listened and restrained it all over again.

_That doesn't sound at all like __**anyone**__ I know_, Del thought wryly as she stepped in the door. Out loud she said, "Jack, I see you still can't behave yourself."

"Fuck you," Jack said with a snort, then jerked her chin toward Del's arm. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing serious, just a random hole," Shepard replied, even as Chakwas stepped away from Jack and headed for her.

"I'll be the judge of that, thank you. Let's get those pads off."

"Always trying to get me out of my clothes, Helen," Shepard teased as she helped the doctor strip off the upper half of her hard-suit.

"I will never give up," Chakwas teased right back, critically examining the wound before scanning it. "You're right, it's nothing serious. Just a graze, soft-tissue. I'll seal it up. However, you _will_ be taking it easy on that arm for the next twenty-four or I will put you in a full body cast and nail you to the wall."

Shepard blinked, brows lifting. "Oh really?"

"Yes," Helen retorted. "I'm not treating _this_ three times like I did your broken hand, and there's no other cure for 'impossibly stubborn.'"

* * *

><p>"Commander Shepard."<p>

Del jolted awake in an instant, thrusting aside the tangled bedclothes almost before her eyes even opened. "EDI? What is it?"

"Tali is armed and down in the cargo bay with Legion," EDI reported. "I believe she means to do something drastic."

"Shit…who's closer?" Shepard demanded, sleep banished from her eyes in a heartbeat as she ran barefoot for the lift.

"Garrus has just entered the bay as well. He halted security outside the door."

Shepard made it down to the bay in record time, pointing firmly at the two security men hovering just outside the door, her gesture a clear indication to get out of the way.

She saw Garrus first, lingering half a dozen feet inside. He had his hand on his pistol but had not drawn it, and seemed wary but relaxed enough. He turned to look at the small human woman as she strode in.

"Had to expect this would happen sooner or later," he murmured as Shepard reached his side, taking in the situation.

Legion stood in the middle of the bay, its head turned to one side as if avoiding looking at the quarian directly. Its whole posture spoke of diffusion, of presenting no threat…far better than one of aggression or outright hostility.

Tali stood only a few feet away, a pistol lifted and aimed at the geth. She seemed resolved, firm, but Shepard could see the muzzle of the weapon trembling just the slightest bit. As Del reached Garrus's side, Tali caught sight of her.

"I'm glad you're here, Jie Jie," she stated.

"What's going on, Mei Mei? What's the sit?" Del asked as she strode over, halting only a couple of feet away. Though Legion had the submissive posture, Shepard's dark eyes were promising it all sorts of violence if it had dared hurt the quarian.

"I caught Legion hacking in to my omni-tool," Tali accused furiously. "It was going to send files of father's experiments back to the geth."

"Creator Zorah performed experiments on the geth," Legion said calmly. "We thought it prudent to warn our people."

"If you send those files to the geth, the Migrant Fleet will be wiped out!" Tali said in an anger borne of fear.

"We would seek to defend ourselves against the Creator threat," Legion agreed.

"Hang on, both of you just stop," Del ordered. Stepping between the two she took light hold of Tali's wrist. "Put it down, Mei Mei-"

"_What?_ Shepard, you're taking its side over _mine?_" The note of shock and betrayal in Tali's voice made Shepard's heart ache a little, and her jaw tightened.

"_Never_, Tali…I'm trying to talk some sense into _both_ of you. Now put it down."

Reluctantly the quarian lowered the pistol, but she didn't ship it. Once it was down Shepard measured them both with a gaze.

"Legion, if you send that information to your people, they'll attack the Creators."

"Yes."

"If you send that data there will be war. A war the geth, the quarians, nor the _galaxy_ can afford right now. It will bring nothing but pain and suffering to both sides."

"We must defend ourselves."

"Yeah, you must." Turning her gaze to her friend she said, "Tali, if the geth had files that showed they did experiments on quarians and were considering an attack on the Migrant Fleet you'd sure as _fuck _be warning them about it."

"W-well, yes…but-"

"When does it fucking end?" Shepard wanted to know. "When both of your people are extinct? Sooner or later _someone_ has to choose to stop fighting this war. The quarians take steps to defend themselves against a supposed geth threat, the geth take steps to defend themselves against a quarian threat…and all that happens is you _start_ the same goddamn massacre you're trying to _prevent_. Legion, we helped you against the heretics. I took a risk and trusted you when I really had no goddamn cause to do so. Tali was there, _right there helping us_, against her better judgment."

The geth unit was silent, its tiny flaps working once again in seeming agitation. Tali was looking downward at the floor, pistol still dangling in her hand. Shepard gave them a moment, then continued in a low voice.

"Now. Tali, it's hard for me too, but Legion has been honest with us. The geth beyond the Veil are not the same as the ones we've fought before. Their people have every right to live and defend themselves as any other race does. Legion, you oppose the Old Machines, the heretics. You wanted my help, wanted to join us, for that very reason. Do you want to wipe out _half_ of your people in a futile war with the quarians while the Old Machines tear apart everything in their path? Is that fucking logical?"

"No."

"Then you need to build a goddamn consensus and built it now. Do we take this further or does this stop here in this room?"

A brief pause, and then Legion straightened a little. "We have formed consensus, Shepard-Commander. In interest of unit cohesion, we will not forward the files to our people."

Tali's whole being seemed to sag in relief, her voice notably trembling as she nodded. "Thank you, Legion," she murmured. "I…what if I gave you some non-classified information to send?"

"That would be…acceptable," it replied.

"All right then," Shepard nodded in relief. "We have an understanding. Now, can we organics get back to our shut-eye? Some of us need all the beauty sleep we can rustle up."

As she headed toward the cargo door, nodding to a much-relieved Garrus, Tali trotted to catch up, taking her arm and halting her before she reached the door.

"I'm…I'm sorry, Jie Jie."

"Don't be," Shepard told her kindly. "You were doing what you thought best for the Flotilla, Tali. I can't fault you for that."

She took light hold of the younger girl's shoulders and smiled at her. "I am, however, _immensely_ proud of you, Mei Mei. Anyone on the Admiralty Board would be better off taking a few lessons from you."

"I….th-thank you, Shepard." Tali's blush was clear in her voice, in the way she half-ducked her head. "That means a lot, coming from you."

Shepard straightened, bussing a hand lightly over the quarian's helmet. "Go and get some rest, Mei Mei. I need you clear-minded to work on that IFF."

"Aye aye."

As Shepard walked out of the bay, Tali glanced almost sheepishly up at Garrus, before looking back at Legion.

Shepard was right, but right or not…Tali hoped she hadn't just made the biggest mistake of her life.


	64. Chapter 64

A/N: Usual warning, slightly left of canon. Though I know me saying that is pretty much the same as me saying 'hey guys, I put words on paper,' but…**shrug**

Also, more shmexy. Yeah, pretty hard-core too. It might ACTUALLY get slightly above a G rating this time. **nods solemnly**

Oh…and **teehee**

Sometimes, you just gotta **teehee**

* * *

><p>"Something the matter?" Kelly asked, straightening from her station as she caught sight of the look on Miranda Lawson's face. The dark-haired XO was watching Shepard walk away toward the lift after having handed her an acquisition approval.<p>

"She was smiling," Miranda noted with barely a glance at the yeoman. She said it in the same wary manner someone would normally note something like 'she looked pissed'.

"Smiling is _generally_ a good sign," Kelly pointed out.

"This is _Shepard_," Miranda reminded her. "She only smiles on three occasions: when Liara is aboard, when she's about to kill something, or when she's trying to be subversive."

"That's _not_ true," Kelly defended, then gave a wry smirk. "Sometimes she smiles when she's drunk."

Miranda gave the yeoman a look, and Kelly chuckled. "Look, maybe she's just happy. We _are_ on our way to Hagalaz-"

"And then we'll be heading directly into the Omega Four relay," Miranda told her. She didn't point out that they would likely not be coming back _out_…it was a fact everyone on the crew was all too aware of.

"In a few days," Kelly hedged. "We've still got several hours at least before the IFF is fully integrated and even then, we've got to test it first. It's not like we're just going to power it on and go jumping through blind…Shepard is reckless sometimes but not with her ship _or _her crew."

Miranda wasn't convinced, folding her arms. Every fiber of her body was saying the same thing.

Shepard was up to something.

* * *

><p>"Mei Mei, what's our status?" Shepard asked without preamble, striding into engineering. Tali turned around, her posture speaking of slight surprise even if her expression could not be seen.<p>

"Well, the hardware integration was successful. EDI is working on the software translation protocols."

"With secondary systems on manual overview, the expected time until completion has been greatly reduced," EDI told her. "My initial examination of the necessary protocols is more favorable than I had expected. I believe I will have the IFF ready for the first full test in just under six hours."

Shepard blinked. "That quickly? You thought it would take days."

"My expectation was that the programming language used by the IFF would be beyond our interface formatting. I was incorrect. While the language _is_ foreign, it seems to be prepared with universal translation algorithms, allowing the IFF to be more easily used across incompatible software. Also, that time estimate is merely for the testing to begin. Provided favorable results, the _Normandy_ could access the Omega Four relay in just under seventy-two hours."

"That doesn't make sense," Tali pointed out. "Why would the Reapers create their IFFs to be more easily used by _others?_"

"Perhaps to facilitate transference of the technology to species it integrates or repurposes as resources," EDI posited. "Slave species such as the Collectors or the Geth heretics would need a safe means to travel and would not necessarily have compatible programming translation."

"Good point," Shepard said, folding her arms. "So Tali's part in integrating this IFF is complete?"

"Any aid Tali could further render could easily be provided by Daniels or Donnelly…or any other crewmember with a working knowledge of program languages," EDI told her.

"Good. What's our location status?"

"We have just entered solar orbit of Hagalaz," EDI told her. "Joker was preparing to inform you."

"Tell him I'm informed," Shepard said sternly, her eyes sparking. "And tell every goddamn specialist on this ship I want them in the shuttle bay in _thirty minutes_."

"Understood, Commander."

"Tali, that means you too. _Ma shang_." Shepard said as she turned to go.

"Why do you need every specialist to go down to Hagalaz at once?" the quarian asked, baffled.

"That's _classified_, engineer!" Shepard snapped tersely, never breaking her stride. "I need you ready for an operation that is vital to the success of our mission. Now move it, Zorah! Thirty minutes!"

* * *

><p>"Miranda, do <em>you<em> know what this is about?" Kasumi asked, just as confused as the others gathered in the shuttle bay. The vehicle itself was powered though idle, the low hum of its engines filling the vast space. No one else seemed to know what was happening, and the small thief had all but pounced on the XO as soon as she appeared. If _anyone_ had more information about this besides Shepard, it would be Miranda.

"I am not in the habit of questioning the orders of my superior," Miranda said with mild irritation. Kasumi smirked.

"A simple 'I don't have the foggiest' would have sufficed," she teased.

"Eh, I just hope we get to _kill _something," Grunt rumbled.

"On Hagalaz?" Tali folded her arms with a scoff. "Doubtful. Maybe Liara found some new intel or more weapons-upgrades or something…"

"Shepard would hardly need us all to go down to the Broker ship for intel or weapons-upgrades," Jacob shook his head. "I don't like this. Classified? Something so big she needs _all_ of us? No, I don't like this at _all_-"

"Reason is obvious, as is motivation," Mordin Solus told them as he crossed the floor, overhearing Tali and Jacob's comments. "Not unexpected move, considering…surprised at confusion."

"What? What 'obvious reason?'" Miranda asked. "She told _you_ what this is about?"

"No. Figured it out. Took less than ten seconds."

"Are you going to tell _us_?" the XO demanded. Mordin looked absolutely scandalized.

"Would never do that! Classified information, would be treason…capital offense. Not big fan of execution."

"I hate you so much," the Australian grumbled, ignoring the faint smile that appeared on the salarian's face.

The door opened again, admitting Samara. The Justicar looked as cool and collected as always, and right on her heels came Shepard herself.

She clapped her hands twice, firmly. "All right people! Let's get on board and move out. Time's wasting!"

As the specialists started to climb on board a voice rang across the bay. "Shepard-Commander!"

The group paused as Shepard turned her head, eyes fixing on the geth as he walked toward her.

"Legion?"

"Are we…considered among the specialists?" it asked. "We heard your order and we would prefer to accompany you."

Shepard straightened a little. She could feel the weight of a dozen gazes upon her as the others waited to see what she would do. Images of the geth heavy shoving the ruined MAKO aside on Noveria filled her mind, seconds before it was consumed in flames. Memories of Eden Prime, of the civvies impaled on dragon's teeth, jumbled together in a torrent.

Then, her own voice seemed to fill her ears, words she had spoken to Ashley so long ago.

_Say you're right. Say everyone's out for himself…speaking in the scope of sentient galactic species. Now we as humans enter the picture, and your answer to this is to do the same thing…which changes absolutely nothing. Doesn't change anyone's mind, does no one any good, no lesson learned. __**Someone's**__ got to take the first step into something new. __**Someone's**__ got to try something differently._

Squaring her shoulders a little, Shepard strode forward toward the geth unit, and damned if the thing didn't look sheepish again. Halting in front of it, she firmly stuck out her hand.

Legion regarded the hand for a moment, its tiny little flaps shifting a little, before it tentatively reached out with its own hand, taking hers. She gripped it tight a moment, then nodded.

"Permission granted, _Specialist_ Legion," she said. "Now get your metal _tun_ on board."

* * *

><p>"All right, ladies and gentlemen, listen up," Del barked at the group. Crowded as the small vehicle was there was standing room only, and she was planted just in front of the door, bracing herself with a grip on the rail over it. All eyes turned toward her, silence falling. Shepard waited until she had their undivided attention…a feat which took only nanoseconds…before she continued.<p>

"What we are about to embark upon may be the most _pivotal_ operation thus far in our pursuit of the Collectors. I _know_ that I can count on you, but each and every one of you absolutely _must_ give your all to what lies ahead of us. In just a few short minutes, this door behind me will open again and _everything_ that follows will depend on you. I won't lie. If I had my way I'd have _every single one_ of _Normandy's_ crew about to face this with us. Unfortunately EDI needs the additional monitoring overview and man-hours on the secondary systems to dedicate her runtime to the IFF integration. So…this is solely up to _us_."

The shuttle bumped slightly as it lowered to dock. Shepard's eyes were solemn and her voice low as she cleared her throat. "Whatever happens…it has been an honor to serve with each and every one of you."

The door swung open, baring Wilcher's grim face. As soon as it had lifted far enough he thrust his hand out, passing Shepard a long-necked bottle. She took it with a stern nod and then turned back to them, gripping the cork.

"There is _booze_," she barked as she yanked the cork free, the champagne foaming in a jet before spilling along its side. "There is _music_, and there is a _fuck of a lot of food_! You _will _disembark this shuttle immediately and you _will_ go and have some _goddamn fun_! That's an order! Eat, drink, be merry…for tomorrow, we blow some _big_ _goddamn shit __**up**_!"

* * *

><p>Liara smiled faintly as she watched the large group gathered in one of the spare cargo bays. Beyond the specialists from the <em>Normandy<em>, every member of Thanatos that was not on necessary duty was there as well.

They had been planning this ever since the successful acquisition of the IFF. Shepard knew as well as any commander that soldiers needed to decompress…especially before something so dire as what they were about to face.

Liara had procured alcohol of twelve different varieties and obscene amounts of food in both dextro and levo varieties, insuring that even Tali and Garrus would be able to stuff themselves. Ori and Sydney had worked to provide music, which spanned across almost all cultures and genres.

Liara's smile turned somewhat sad as she realized that this was, in fact, her first real party…and was likely her first _good-bye_ party as well. In her mind, the hours between now and when the _Normandy _would carry Shepard off into the Omega Four relay were far too few…and vanishing quickly.

_Shepard will make it back. If anyone could, you know it would be her._

"Hey, you…"

The subject of her thoughts drew close to her side, an arm sliding around her waist as Shepard smiled at her. She had a half-consumed beer in the other hand, and using it she gestured at the gathering.

"Looks like this is going better than I thought it would," she said. "Sydney's even managing to stay in the same room with Thane without tearing him apart."

"Yes," Liara agreed, her own arm sliding around Shepard's waist. "She has found an acceptable peace with what happened, I believe. It was never truly him that made her angry. To be honest, my real concerns lay elsewhere. I was…worried, when I realized you had brought the geth unit on board."

Shepard nodded. Legion stood on the far side of the room, more than one suspicious or distrustful gaze cast its way. Ori, it seemed, was having the _opposite _reaction. She was talking quite animatedly with it, clearly fascinated by being so close to a working troop unit.

"It seems to be all right. Looks like its shine has drawn the little spitfire's attention, anyway."Shepard took a swig of her beer, then smirked. "You should have seen Miranda's face, Tianlán. It was _killing_ her that she didn't know what was going on, and when she finally found out I thought she was going to gut me alive with her glare alone."

"That does not seem to have changed," Liara noted, indicating the distant XO with a nod of her head. Miranda was lingering near one wall, arms folded, watching the goings on with her usual stiff disapproval. "She does not seem to be enjoying herself."

"You're right- hey, Lawson! _**LAWSON**_!"

She shouted to be heard over the music, watching as Miranda straightened a little, tilting her head as she sought out the source of the calls. When she noted Shepard, the human commander waved her hand, directing her to come over.

Miranda strode over, posture no less stiff, her tone as formal as ever. "What is it, Commander?"

"_Shepard,_" Del insisted. "And this is a fucking _party_, if you hadn't noticed."

"I _had _noticed, thank you," Miranda replied coolly.

"Would a little R&R kill you?"

"There are a million things I could be attending to aboard the _Normandy_," Miranda pointed out. "I don't _do_ R&R."

"Jesus fuck, does that explain a _lot_," Shepard told her. Stepping back a pace she half-turned and pointed at a wide table that had been set up behind her. Garrus, Zaeed, Tali, and several of Thanatos had already sat down at it, but a few seats remained empty.

"Poker. Now."

"Shepard-"

"You still remember what _orders_ are, don't you?" Shepard challenged. "Poker. _Now!_"

Narrowing her eyes, Miranda turned with a frustrated sound, and strode obediently toward the table. Garrus blinked at her as she drew near, shifting his chair slightly to give her more room as she moved to sit down. His expression still surprised he looked toward Del.

"You joining us, Shepard?" he asked.

She was on the cusp of motion when Liara's light touch to the small of her back distracted her. Glancing over at the asari, she watched as Liara arched an eyebrow slightly, inclining her head. The intent behind the motion was faint but unmistakable.

"Uh…not right now, Garrus," Shepard called back. "Maybe in an hour or two, I think. You make sure Miranda stays there and plays at least four rounds, you hear me?"

Though his blue-grey eyes twinkled a little with knowing, the turian pretended indignation. "C'mon, Shepard…what could _possibly_ be more fun than playing a few hands with your friends?"

Liara had stepped away from her side, and Shepard's gaze shifted a little as she watched the asari walk with a deliberate and incredibly distracting saunter toward the door leading deeper into the ship. Del quickly knocked the remainder of her beer back, swallowing.

"Uh…" A wicked grin appeared on her face as she answered him. "_Calibrations…_"

"Oh, _ha ha_! Yeah, that one _never_ gets old," Garrus snorted after her, chuckling and shaking his head as he watched the commander trot after Liara.

* * *

><p>Shepard was not far behind when Liara stepped into her room. Taking a few bold strides forward, Del caught the asari up with a sweep of her arm around her waist, turning her around and drawing her in.<p>

"Well, hello. Look what I found," she teased gently with a smile, before ducking in and kissing her. Intent as it was, the kiss was still tender, lingering and breathless.

Liara's arms wound around her shoulders as her fingers tangled into that soft dark hair. Her very being seemed to capture the moment in her mind, sealing it within to keep it safe and treasured.

As Del's kisses travelled down her neck, inciting thin trails of fire wherever they landed, Liara's lashes fluttered, eyes rolling shut.

"We cannot be absent for the entire party," she warned breathlessly. Shepard dipped a little, hooking her hands around the asari's thighs and lifting her. Liara instinctively wound her legs around Del's waist as the commander carried her the few steps over to the bed, lowering her down and spilling atop her without allowing a single centimeter of space to develop between them.

"We won't be," Shepard promised, dragging her teeth over the folds on Liara's neck until the asari arched a little at the sensation. Shifting , Del looked down into her Tianlán's eyes and gave another wicked little grin. "Just _most_ of it…"

* * *

><p>The sensation of separation was, as always, a lonely feeling. Two souls so perfectly intermeshed being parted into full individuality once more was something that always made Del shiver just slightly, a loss she only endured because she knew it would never be a permanent one.<p>

Tangled in Liara's sheets, the asari draped over her, Shepard closed her eyes and held her tightly, listening as their hearts began to slow their rhythm.

"By the Goddess," Liara whispered against her ear. "I shall never get enough of that."

Shepard cocked a grin, chuckling a little before putting on a drawl. "Why, thankee kindly ma'am. Ah do aim to please."

Liara giggled, giving the human woman a light pinch to the ribs, before she shifted to the side. Del turned with her as their legs tangled together. Her thumb lightly drifted over the faint freckles on the asari's face, and she blinked when Liara suddenly gripped hold of her, hugging her almost painfully tightly.

"Li, what's the matter?" she asked, alarmed. A breath later Liara released her, drawing back to sit on the edge of the bed, her head lowered.

"I am sorry. I am…I am here with you. I should be happy-"

"Li, talk to me…" Shepard whispered, shifting into a sit as well and taking hold of her shoulder. "It's the relay, isn't it?"

"This could be the last time that you are with me," Liara told her, her aqueous blue eyes shifting to meet Del's dark brown.

"_No,"_ Del whispered in return, voice soft but intent. "No matter what happens, Liara…I will _always_ be with you."

"I know that you must go through that relay," Liara murmured, her lashes dipping as she turned her gaze downward. "So many depend on it…Nan, the stolen colonists…thousands, if not _millions_ of lives. Perhaps I am selfish. Even knowing all of that, knowing the scope of what is at stake…all I can focus on is that I am most likely losing you…again."

Shepard sighed, resting her forehead on Liara's shoulder. After a moment, the asari's fingers tangled in her hair once more, gripping lightly. She felt a gentle kiss on the crown of her head, before the soft weight of Liara's cheek.

"I will be all right, Shepard," she whispered. "You have accomplished the impossible before. If anyone can make it into that relay and return back again, I know it is you."

"Liara…"

Drawing back a little and turning more toward the human woman, Liara lifted her hands and cupped Shepard's face. Leaning in, she gave her a soft, almost chaste kiss.

"I know," she murmured. Then she shook her head. "So…Legion. Tali cannot have been too happy about that."

"No," Shepard sighed, accepting Liara's need for a change of subject…though it was odd to be sitting naked on a bed while discussing _geth._ "She wasn't too happy with it or with me, I'm afraid…especially when I agreed to rewrite those heretics so they could rejoin the consensus."

"Tali loves and respects you," Liara told her. "She trusts you enough to follow your lead."

"I know. Problem is, I'm hardly the best example for someone to follow-"

"Now, none of _that_," Liara chided gently. "I will accept no insult to you, Shepard…not even from your own lips."

"Hmm," Shepard gave her an unconvinced little smirk. "I talked with it for a while…after the mission. It told me that the geth called Sovereign _Nazara_…did you know that? It _also_ said that Sovereign referred to me as _Iovino, _as well as Commander Shepard."

The asari's brows knit a little, sounding it out. "Yo-vee-noh?"

"Mmhmm. I asked Legion what that meant and he simply said, 'Shepard-Commander'."

"That makes little sense. Why would Sovereign call you by your name _and_ this one if they mean the same thing?"

"Beats me. Maybe it's just my rank, the way they understand it. Maybe it really means 'irritating bitch' and it was afraid I'd shoot it if it told me that. I don't know."

"Iovino…" Liara murmured. Shepard recognized the sudden inward shift of her eyes and smiled.

"I just put another puzzle in front of you, didn't I?"

Liara smiled, her eyes refocusing, before she leaned forward and lightly kissed her love again. "Come. We should get back to the others…for a little while at least."

Shepard nodded, then hugged her close. Truth be told she could stay in that room with Liara forever, forget about the relay, the mission…_everything _but them.

_Leaving Nan lost and forgotten on her own…leaving them __**all**__ lost and forgotten._

Shepard couldn't do that, no matter how tempting the prospect.

"Yeah…I guess we should."

* * *

><p>Music enveloped them as they rejoined their friends, Liara trailing behind Shepard with their hands entwined. The poker game was still in full swing though some of the players seemed to have changed. To Shepard's astonishment, Miranda was still at the table, scrutinizing the cards in front of her like she was examining a particularly virulent strain of bacteria.<p>

Grunt, typical of being both a krogan and a growing boy, had all but decimated an entire banquet's worth of food on his lonesome. He was standing at the edge of the spread, a haunch of roasted meat the size of a small child in one hand, a rather large bottle of ryncol in the other.

"Shepard…?" Liara questioned as the commander didn't head directly for the poker table, nor for the food or booze. With an enigmatic smirk, Del kept on right into the middle of the floor, before stopping and turning.

Releasing Liara's hand she took a half-step backward, sketching a very elegant bow before offering her hand again. When Liara hesitated a moment, Shepard cocked that teasing grin of hers.

"C'mon, T'Soni," she said. "Don't tell me you don't know how to dance?"

Liara's cheeks heated slightly, remembering that Shepard had said those words to her before, on that night so long ago in her quarters when Liara's affection for the human woman had tipped the balance straight over into love.

Reaching out she took that hand and allowed herself to be drawn in, held close as the music took them over.

* * *

><p>"I'm going to get a fucking toothache," Jack grumped, glancing over the poker table to see Shepard and Liara on the dance floor. Beside her, Tali giggled.<p>

"I think it's sweet! Can't you dance, Jack?"

"I can dance a fuck of a lot better than _Shepard_," the ex-con smirked. "Ain't gonna dance to this fucking _sappy_ shit though."

Wilcher cleared his throat, then got to his feet, setting his cards down. "Well, _I_ for one _will _dance to this 'sappy shit,'" he grinned, then half bowed as he held his hand out to the woman sitting beside him. Miranda looked at the proffered hand with shock.

"Would you do me the honor?" he asked.

"Go on, Cheerleader," Jack taunted. "It'll help get that stick out of your ass!"

Miranda's blue eyes shifted to ice as she glared at the other woman, then lifted her chin. Setting her cards down crisply, she took the ex-marine's hand and rose. "Sure, why not?"

* * *

><p>When the song ended, Del smiled at Liara, then blinked around, startled to see they were no longer the only couple on the floor. Wilcher had joined in with Miranda, Garrus with Tali, and shockingly enough, Zaeed with Deirdre, the expression on both the asari's <em>and<em> Sydney's faces greatly amused.

"Looks like we started a trend," Shepard teased her partner, bending in and kissing her cheek.

"_Stop_ that," Jack ordered as she walked up, shoving a beer in Shepard's face. "Here, get drunk like a normal goddamn person, would you? _Then_ I'm going to plaster your ass at Skyllian Five."

"Oh really?" Shepard smirked, accepting the beer. "I'd have to be _seriously _drunk for _that_ bullshit to happen. I-"

"_Shepard!"_

Turning her head, Del's eyes fell on Grunt as the young krogan strode across the floor. He pointed at Ori with the half-eaten haunch of meat in his hand and ordered, "Turn that shit off!"

Raising her brows, the little redheaded engineer obediently switched the music off as Grunt faced his puzzled commander.

Thrusting the flask of ryncol up into the air he grinned. "Here's to Shepard," he declared. "The greatest Battlemaster ever to draw breath! May the bodies of her dead foes pile to the stars!"

Around the room, her crew and several of Thanatos lifted their own drinks, voicing their agreement. Liara affectionately touched Shepard's elbow as the woman lowered her head a moment.

Then Shepard grinned, thrusting her own beer up into the air. "To my crew…my _friends. _To the sorriest lot of criminals, cutthroats, brutes, mercs, killers, pirates…and _Tali."_

A roar of laughter filled the room as the quarian ducked her head a little, giggling. Shepard winked at her, and then lifted her voice again.

"Someone wise once said this to me and so I say this to _you,_ motherfuckers. Never trust a private with a loaded weapon or an officer with a map, and goddamn _never_ share a foxhole with anyone braver than you! Motherfucking shit-sucking _amen_!"

"_**Amen!"**_

* * *

><p>It had edged past midnight, ship time, but hardly anyone seemed of a mind to retire. Shepard sat at the poker table, the latest in a long line of cigars smoldering in her teeth and a whiskey parked at her elbow as she regarded her cards.<p>

Grunt, it seemed, had found an odd kindred spirit in Wilcher. Both krogan boy and human man were drunk, and Wilcher had introduced Grunt to the ancient human art of arm wrestling…a task for which they thankfully seemed evenly matched. Anyone other than the massive Wilcher likely would have gotten his shoulder ripped out of the socket.

Liara sat beside Shepard though she was herself not playing, leaning against the commander with her chin resting on her shoulder, long fingers tracing idle patterns against the back of her t-shirt. She was smiling faintly as she listened to Garrus.

"…so there he was, the last merc standing," the turian was saying, his mandibles flapping slightly in amusement. "He's got his pistol aimed right at Shepard, see, but he's flat pale. I figure he's been winged, that he's probably lost a lot of blood at this point. Still, he's got her dead in his sights so of course I think Shepard is going to take him out."

"This story is greatly exaggerated, I just want to put that out in advance," Del said dryly, giving the turian an even look.

"So what happened?" Jacob wanted to know.

"Shepard walks up to the merc like she's got all the balls in the galaxy, completely ignores the weapon in his hand. She's got this look on her face like she could spit and light a fire-"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Shepard snorted.

"-and she goes right up, her throat maybe an inch from the barrel of his gun, and just snags it right out of his hand."

Garrus punctuated this with a demonstrative grab at thin air, a moment before he chuckled. "Turned out the kid wasn't wounded at all, he was just scared shitless. When she grabbed that pistol, he fainted."

Laughter rumbled over the group and Shepard huffed a cloud of smoke. "I would just like to point out that the dumb fuck left his safety on. A blind FNG could have seen that from fifty paces. He barely knew what end of the weapon to hold on to."

"Face it, Jie Jie," Tali teased. "You're just terrifying. I don't think you even _shoot_ your enemies any more, you just _look_ at them and they drop dead voluntarily."

"Is it possible for organics to 'drop dead voluntarily?'" Legion asked. He had been lurking near the table, unmoving and silent for so long they had all but forgotten he was there. Shepard shook her head.

"No, not really, Legion…Tali was just making a joke."

"We see. Was it…funny?"

"It was fucking _hilarious_, Tintop," Sydney grinned, using the nickname she'd adopted for the geth almost the instant he'd set foot on the Broker ship. "Shepard, are you _in_ or are you just going to stare all night at your cards looking intimidating until _they_ faint as well?"

"I'm in, _smartass_," Shepard snorted, tossing a pair of chits into the center. "And I _raise_ just for that bullshit remark."

"Shit…" Sydney scowled, pitching her cards down. "Fucking fold. I fucking _knew_-"

"Commander Shepard!"

Ori's voice drew all eyes as she ran across the room, both her tone and her expression immediately banishing all thoughts of revelry. Shepard straightened in her seat, removing her cigar from her lips.

"What is it?"

"We have a communication for you on emergency channels, from the _Normandy_," Ori reported breathlessly.

Immediately Shepard was on her feet, almost in concert with nearly everyone else at the poker table. Cancelling the music, Ori used the console to access the emergency channel, stepping aside as Shepard strode up. The silence that suddenly filled the room behind her was ominously thick.

"This is Commander Shepard," she stated.

"_Commander, we have a situation,"_ EDI replied, speaking quickly. _"Our first test run of the integrated IFF revealed an exceptionally sophisticated reductionist communication code that was not apparent during my analysis. The moment it was powered on, the IFF began an encrypted transmit of the __**Normandy's **__location through background static."_

"Transmit? Transmit to _who_?" Shepard demanded.

"_The Collectors,"_ EDI replied. _"They were upon us in moments, Shepard. Thanks to Joker's efforts I was able to preserve the __**Normandy**__, however the crew was taken."_

Shepard felt time stop around her, the breath seeming to still in her chest. Behind her she thought she heard someone's soft gasp of shock, but couldn't tell who it was.

"EDI…would you repeat that please?" she asked, her voice sounding a million miles away even to her own ears.

"_Shepard…the crew is __**gone**__."_


	65. Chapter 65

A/N: Just a bit of silly before we get into all the drama A conversation with EvilSwissMiss prompted this, so blame her ;)

**clears throat**

I am the very model of a hyperactive literist…I'll use my fic to decimate that coward of a Catalyst...in matters Li and Shepard I will be extremely amorous but in-evit-ably I will be the fade-to-black-iust…

When it comes to smokes and Li Del Shepard is in fact the greediest…the bars she likes to hang in are unfailingly the seediest…

I let my writing lead so that I am the left-of-canon-ist…I am the very model of a hyperactive lit-er-isssst!

**sketches bow**

**crickets**

**straightens and clears throat** Ahem. On to story.

* * *

><p>"Where are you now?" she heard herself demand. Some part of her was aware of her fingers pressed hard to the edges of the console. Some part was aware of the form that moved to her side, not having to glance to know it was Sydney. Some part could also feel the distant pulse of her heartbeat, a heavy warning drum calling the natives to war.<p>

"_We were able to make an FTL jump out of the system. We travelled only far enough to elude the Collectors. We are returning to Hagalaz now, and should be back in solar orbit in five minutes. Our long range scans show the Collector vessel has already departed the system."_

"This should not be possible," she heard Liara say from several feet away. "Feron, Ori, why did our own…"

Her voice continued but faded away from Shepard's radar as she continued speaking to EDI, asking the question she knew Sydney was fighting not to just blurt out. "EDI, what about the _Pale Horse_?"

Sydney's ship remained in solar orbit whenever the blonde was aboard the Broker ship. It provided yet another warning system in case anyone entered the system and sported enough gun-power to at least _delay_ two or three frigates. The ship had been flanking the _Normandy_ when they'd departed it to dock here.

"_It is gone, Shepard_," EDI replied bluntly. "_The Collector vessel has more advanced FTL technology than any Alliance vessel. It appeared within latching distance of the _Normandy_. Unfortunately, the _Pale Horse_ was in its landing path. It was destroyed at the same instant the hostile was upon us."_

Shepard's grip on the console turned her knuckles white as she ducked her head a moment, before snarling, "How the fuck did we not know they were there?" she demanded furiously. "Ship that size should have tripped _every_ alarm in the goddamn system!"

"_The vessel-"_ EDI began to explain, only to cut off as Shepard interrupted.

"Save it! We can discuss it aboard ship. We're heading back now. I want the _Normandy_ turning on its head and out of the system the instant we're aboard!"

"_Understood."_

Turning around, Shepard regarded all the eyes staring at her. "All right! _My_ people; we're going to the shuttle now! We have to get after those fuckers before they get too far!"

"Wilcher, get this mess stowed and get this ship on full lockdown," Sydney barked at her second-in-command. Instantly the silence in the room shifted to chaos. The blonde followed Shepard as she headed over to where Liara and Feron were searching through a second console, a dozen screens lit up and hovering around them.

"Why did we get no alarms?" Del demanded.

"Not a single one of our systems was tripped," Liara told her. "Our short-range and long-range scans show the _Normandy_ and the _Pale Horse_ in orbit…and then the _Pale Horse_ simply vanishes. The Collector vessel must have a stealth capability even greater than the _Normandy._"

"That's not possible," Sydney grumped. Shepard looked at her friend. Though she was holding herself together admirably, Del could see the grief and simmering fury in the blonde's eyes, her bearing. Shepard's crew had vanished, true…but Sydney's ship had been destroyed, fourteen men and women under her command lost beyond any hope of recovery. "Sovereign and the geth ships that attacked the Citadel showed _no sign_ of stealth capability!"

"Liara," Feron, who had continued to dissect the files, suddenly spoke up…his voice troubled. "It's worse than that…"

"What?" Liara asked, looking at her friend.

"The Collector vessel has no stealth capability," he said. "Someone altered our security program algorithms to return a false negative when detecting the signature of both Collector and Reaper ships."

"_What?"_

He sent the display over to her, showing the gathered women the lines of code. "It was cleverly done, and would be unnoticeable unless something like _this_ occurred to draw attention to it. Our systems are specifically attuned to treat these hostile ships as if they are completely invisible."

"_Had_ to be that _geth_," Sydney growled. Shepard fixed her with a look, but Feron spoke again before she could reply.

"No. These alterations were made quite some time ago, long before the geth unit ever came aboard the _Normandy_. In fact, they nearly coincide with the arrival of Thanatos."

"No!" Sydney growled. "_No_, one of my people could _not_ have done this. I trust every goddamn one of them with my life-"

"Syd," Del said sternly, and the blonde glared at her, literally trembling with fury.

"No! They would _not_ have done this! Del, do you honestly think I would trust your life or Liara's to _anyone_ that hadn't been proven through fire first? These are _good _people-"

"Who may not have _had_ a choice!" Shepard snapped back.

"What are you talking abou-"

"_Indoctrination_," Shepard reminded her. "It's what the fucking Reapers _do_, Syd!"

"How would any of them become _indoctrinated_?"

"I don't know, and I _can't _stand here and figure it out. I need to get back to the _Normandy _and get after those fuckers before it's too late-"

"I am coming with you."

The words came from two different throats almost simultaneously. Both Liara and Sydney's jaws were set, determined.

_Jesus fuck I don't have time for this!_ Del thought before she pointed at Syd. "Inform Wilcher what's going on. Get your crew to strip these systems and see if they can't find any trace of who might have done this. Tell him _not_ to let anyone else on your team know what we suspect…you don't need your men shooting each other because they see traitors in every shadow."

"What if it's Wilcher?" Feron asked.

"Then he's either going to lay low or he's going to do something really fucking stupid, in which case it'll be obvious," Shepard told him.

"Deeds is coming too," Sydney stated. "She's a strong biotic and she has more than a few fights under her belt. She wasn't aboard yet when this happened so she's _not_ the saboteur."

"Fine. Just get your orders set and get aboard. I'm not waiting for your _tun_."

As Sydney strode off, already barking for Wilcher, Shepard grasped Liara's arm and drew her a few feet away. "Liara-"

"I _am_ going with you," Liara insisted firmly.

"This is a suicide mission!" Del hissed. "Do you understand what that _means?_ I am _not_ going to debate this with you-"

"No, you are _not_, because the decision is made," Liara said hotly, folding her arms. "I am not staying behind while you go off once again into more than certain death. If you are to die in this fight, Shepard….then I will be there and take that journey right alongside you."

"This galaxy needs-"

"This galaxy needs _you_ just as much as it needs _me_," Liara contradicted instantly. "I am not staying behind again. You are running out of time, Shepard. We can either stand here arguing this _or_ we can go after your crew."

Shepard's eyes turned darker a moment. That was a low goddamn blow, and she could see the faint wince in Liara's eyes that let her know the asari knew it.

They had no idea what to expect beyond the relay. Even with the IFF there was no guarantee they would even survive arriving at the galactic core. If they did, they still had an entire Collector home world to fight, unknown odds, unknown defenses, unknown terrain. They had done everything they could to prepare but there was no way to truly be _ready_ for this. Taking Liara into that fire was an idea that made Shepard's gut quiver with an unfamiliar sensation.

Sheer, unadulterated fear.

Yet, she could not argue that Liara was more than capable of handling herself. Another powerful biotic on the ride would be helpful…at this point, _any_ additional set of hands would be invaluable, so long as they knew how to point and shoot.

Secondly, it still remained that there was some kind of traitor aboard the Broker ship. Indoctrinated or not, the saboteur had compromised the security of the system and the vessel. This place was no longer safe, and could come under direct attack at any time. Liara would not be protected here, and they could not afford the time to take her anywhere that _would_ be secure.

Stepping back a pace she spoke in a low voice edged with steel. "Get your gear and get on the shuttle. We need to move."

* * *

><p>Joker couldn't have looked more beaten if he had tried, as he stood in front of Shepard, one hand cradling his ribs. Pain both physical and emotional were on his face, and he couldn't seem to meet her eyes. He kept them cast toward the ground throughout his entire report.<p>

"EDI, why did you not alert us the moment the Collector ship appeared?" Shepard demanded, shifting her gaze to the hovering blue orb.

"Several reasons," EDI told her. "Firstly, the Collector ship was emitting an electrostatic pulse which immediately disrupted communication. Using the same encrypted signal that had transmitted our location, they attempted to introduce runtimes into my systems. I was successfully able to purge them, however it took a great deal of processing power. Had I attempted to send off a communication the runtimes would have gained a foothold and I would have been completely corrupted. Also-"

Here the AI paused, making Shepard lift a brow. "Also…?" she prodded.

"There would have been nothing you could do, Shepard," EDI admitted. "Were we to alert you to the situation, you could not have left Hagalaz without compromising its position. Any shuttles launched in an attempt to aid would have easily been targeted and eliminated by the hostiles before they could reach us. Your attempts to render aid would have resulted in the death of the rest of you, and we would stand no chance to rescue our people."

_Our people_, Shepard mentally noted, realizing just how far the AI had come. She had to concede that EDI had a point. Notifying them wouldn't have done anyone any good, but thanks to her and Joker's efforts, they at least had _something_ of a fighting chance.

"Why did the Collectors not fire on Hagalaz?" Liara asked, standing with Sydney, Mordin, and Miranda nearby. "If an indoctrinated traitor was able to cripple our defense network in the system, surely they could have revealed our coordinates."

"Evidence suggests the traitor was never in direct communication with the Collectors," EDI told her. "An indoctrinated servant would conceivably corrupt defenses, perhaps in preparation for the full Reaper invasion, but would not necessarily know that a Collector ship or Reaper would enter the system anytime soon. Our activation of the IFF while in that particular location was mere happenstance…one a servant of the Reapers could not anticipate. Our experience with indoctrinated individuals also suggests that there are varying stages of the effect. One might be willing to disrupt defenses but not necessarily desire to reveal a target they were currently aboard…an attack would have left them as dead as it would the rest of you. We do not know the level of devotion yet needed to override the survival instinct."

"Besides, they didn't _need_ to attack Hagalaz," Shepard grumbled. "They knew that if they took the crew we'd do exactly what we're doing…we'd come to _them_."

"Precisely."

"There's still the little matter of Joker unshackling an AI," Miranda pointed out.

"Hey, if I hadn't, you wouldn't even be standing on this ship," Jeff replied tensely. "EDI is the only reason _any_ of us are here."

"Yes, but nothing is preventing her now from taking over the entirety of the ship, going rogue-"

"You wanna pick nits? Nothing's stopping _you_ from drawing your pistol and shooting us right now," Joker shot back. "Just because someone _can_ do something doesn't mean they _will_."

To hear Joker defend EDI so vehemently took Shepard aback. Normally he couldn't stop griping about her or arguing with her.

"That's enough, Joker," she warned. "Miranda is still your XO and you will show her respect."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I trust EDI. She could have betrayed us the instant those shackles came off if she wanted, she didn't. She's proven her devotion to this crew more than once," Shepard said, then looked at the salarian. "Mordin, I want you to take Joker down to the infirmary and patch him up. I want my pilot back at the helm as soon as possible."

The pair moved out, and Shepard returned her attention to EDI. "How long until we are at the Omega Four?"

"Four hours and eleven minutes, Shepard."

"All right. I want every goddamn one of those minutes to count. Miranda, I want personnel gear inspected and prepped, weapons, armor, barriers. I want full ship diagnostics and dry-run tests of the Thanix power systems. I want every single soul aboard this ship save Joker ready to hit the ground hot the instant we're through that relay."

* * *

><p>Moving through the ship only punctuated its emptiness. Shepard distracted herself with orders and preparations as much as possible, but she could not tune out the empty stations, the fearful thoughts, no matter how hard she tried.<p>

Kelly…gone.

Rupert…gone.

Gabriella and Kenneth…gone.

Helen…_gone._

Closing off as tightly as she could, Shepard targeted her anger, shielded herself in her fury until she was every bit the seasoned Alliance Commander…every bit the wrath of damnation about to descend upon the heads of the unrighteous.

She returned to the Nest to retrieve some of her gear, only to slow to a halt, the set steel in her eyes momentarily losing some of its cohesion. Stepping forward a pace, her fingertips lightly brushed over the plasti-glass side of the habitat.

Rat lay unmoving within.

EDI had vented the ship when they ran, to clear the hostiles. She sealed Joker in the engine room but the rest of the ship was utterly exposed. Neither Rat's habitat nor her wall-sized aquarium was air-tight. Behind her in the shimmering blue, the lifeless white brides drifted like withering, fallen petals.

"I am sorry, Commander," EDI's voice sounded soft, almost tentative, as it spoke up from nearby.

"You did what was necessary, EDI," Del replied in a dull voice. Dropping her fingers from the side of the habitat, that impenetrable resolve descended upon her again like the slamming of a vault door. Turning away from her lifeless pet she strode down toward her locker, gathering what she needed. "Status?"

"I have finished a fifth full scrub and diagnostic scan of the IFF," EDI replied. "There is no trace of hostile code remaining. However, I would recommend at least three test runs with buoys once we've reached the relay."

"The return rate?" Shepard demanded.

"Each test would yield a return rate estimate of an hour, Shepard."

"Three extra hours sitting on our thumbs while the Collectors are doing fuck knows what with our people? No. Time is of the essence."

"I am confident the tests will be successful. There is only a .0042 percent chance that our journey through the relay will fail."

"I'd call those acceptable odds," Shepard straightened. "Notify me when we're in range of the relay. We're going to hit it hot, no delays."

"Understood, Commander. The Illusive Man would also like to speak to you. He has received the report on what has occurred."

"Understood, EDI," Shepard replied. Damn if the man didn't have the best goddamn timing. One wrong button push and-

_No. No, Del, you are not going to rage at him and lose control of yourself. Keep focused. Get the goddamn job done. You're a marine. Act like a goddamn marine!_

Returning downstairs she was unsurprised to see Sydney headed for her, the woman already geared up as if she expected to drop planet-side in the next five minutes.

"Garrus and I have just finished the final calibration and power test on the Thanix," she informed her friend, her look no less resolved. Fury and vengeance for the loss of her ship and friends were the weapons Sydney was honing right now, and while the blonde was far more laid back and had far fewer anger issues than Shepard did, she was a force to be reckoned with if she felt the need to lay down the law. "That gun couldn't get any better if God Himself pulled the trigger."

"Good. Help Tali with a final scope on the kinetic shielding and the engine draw. Where's Liara?"

"Helping Mordin to prep the med-bay and finish the armor adjustments for that little 'fail-safe' of his. He says it'll only work if we encounter small swarms…it'll be useless against big ones but…something's better than nothing."

"Understood. I have a call I need to take and then I'll be in the CIC. ETA to the relay is just over an hour."

She stepped into the conference room and onto the holographic pad, tightening the bolts on her resolve just a thread or two more.

_No matter what he does, what he says, bottle that temper up and use it against the Collectors. Don't waste it, Shepard._

"Commander, I know you are busy with preparations and I won't take up too much of your time," he began the moment the holograph gained cohesion. "I know we haven't always seen eye to eye, but I wanted you to know that I do respect you. What you have accomplished, how far you've come…no one else could have done this."

"It wasn't even _close_ to being on my own," Shepard reminded him. "I have a good crew. I'm going to get them _back_."

"I know you will, Shepard. That determination is exactly why I brought you back. Our thoughts and prayers…the thoughts and prayers of all of humanity…go with you. I know that you will do them proud. I will leave you to your work now, Commander. Good luck."

The call ended, the image fading away, leaving Del to blink slightly in shock. "Huh," she said to nothing. Fucker had almost managed to sound like a decent human being, for once.

As she emerged from the conference room, Liara was waiting to meet her. "We have about an hour until we are at the relay," the asari told her. "Preparations are almost complete."

"How is everyone?"

"Resolved," Liara informed her. "Confident and determined to see this through. They know that you will see this through. I am less concerned about how they feel, however…and more concerned about this ship's commander."

"I'm as fine as I can be," Shepard told her as they moved down the corridor toward the CIC. "I know the mission and I've got the team to accomplish it."

"Yes, you do. We will get them back, Shepard. Kelly, Helen…all of them. I just want to say…thank you, for bringing me along. I am…I am honored, as always, to serve with you."

Shepard suddenly turned on the asari, grasping her arms and pinning her against the wall. The motion was forceful though not painful. The kiss that followed was urgent, firm, almost desperate. Liara, her arms held firmly at her sides, was unable to embrace her. Instead, she returned the kiss with as much passion as it was delivered, fighting against the tears that wanted to heat her eyes.

Then Shepard released her, her brown eyes revealing more than the woman would ever dare say. Silent pleas with the asari to remain safe, a fractured vulnerability she would only ever allow Liara to see. She said nothing verbally, but there was no need. Stepping back, Shepard only turned and continued into the CIC, Liara watching her go, her eyes gloss.

"I love you, too," she whispered.

* * *

><p>"ETA to relay, three minutes," Joker warned. Shepard, Miranda and Liara were standing in the helm, a heavy silence upon them. A few yards away, behind them, Deirdre and Sydney were standing hand in tense hand. Every single one of the women were fully hard-suited, and Liara could hear the faint creak of Shepard's glove as she unconsciously clenched and unclenched her fist.<p>

Joker had fractured numerous ribs during the attempted Collector take-over. Mordin had done a superb job patching him up and getting him back to pilot's seat. Though he had to still be immensely sore, he had refused any and all pain medication…he wanted his wits as sharp as possible for this.

"Keep steady," Shepard told him. "EDI, is the transmission protocol set?"

"Yes, Shepard. I will activate the IFF the moment we are in range of the relay. We should be able to pass through without pause."

The glove creaked again. Snaking a hand out, Liara took hold of Del's hand and gripped it tightly. "This is it," she murmured softly. "Goddess be with us."

Shepard squeezed her hand back just as tightly, her eyes fixed on the nav-screens over Joker's shoulder. She saw the blip as the relay appeared on the scan.

"ETA to relay, fifteen seconds," Joker announced.

"IFF is transmitting," EDI declared. "No errors in protocols. Relay has received signal and is calibrating. We are powering up."

"Seven seconds, this is it," Joker said, his fingers flying. "Everyone get ready…three, two, one!"

Crimson static seemed to lick out from the relay even as it filled the view screen. Shepard felt the familiar, faint jolt as the _Normandy_ was caught in its grip. The ship was cast into ultra-light speeds, transporting across distances that would take them decades to traverse with only FTL drives. For a second or two, time seemed to slow, stretch, the space between one heartbeat and the next drawing out into an eon of time.

In truth, it was less than a second before _Normandy_ was caught by another relay, this one halting its speed like a catcher snagging a fast ball.

Instantly, all Shepard could see through the view screen was _ship._

"Oh _shit!_" Joker gasped, desperately hauling the _Normandy_ away from a collision, only to find another vast plateau of ruined metal looming far too close.

Though the inertial dampeners reduced the drastic swings of motion to a barely felt shift beneath their feet, Shepard still fancied she could feel her gut sink and then swoop up into her throat as the _Normandy _skidded just past a ragged wall half the size of a moon.

A pilot of any lesser skill would have been the ruin of the frigate in only moments. As it was, it was an intense few seconds before Jeff managed to lift the ship away from the crowded wrecks, and up into the open.

"Too close," the pilot murmured to himself, heart pounding. "Too close…"

Shepard gripped his shoulder, stepping up beside his seat as she stared out of the view screen.

Space seemed lit on fire, a brilliant ball the size of ten of their suns forming the hub of what seemed an endless memorial of ruin. Ships…millions of them, _trillions_…formed a tragic tableau that was utterly breathtaking…and terrifyingly _familiar._

_In a swirling green mist of nausea, images rose from the dark and faded away again into fire. The great metal hands. The shrieking synthetic, melting and peeling away. A great twisting inferno, ringed by a floating graveyard._

"These must be all the ships that have tried to pass through the relay before," Miranda noted, unable to hide the wonder in her own voice. "Some must be _billions_ of years old…

"Del," Liara said softly. She, too, recognized the scene…indeed it was one she would never be able to forget. "The…the _Protheans_ must have come here at one point. Perhaps seeking a way to stop the Reapers, as we are. At least one of their vessels must have returned long enough to add this image to their Beacons-"

"You saw this in your beacon visions?" Sydney asked, blinking.

"Yes," Shepard told her. "Liara must be right…some lucky Prothean ship must have made it through and back."

"For what purpose though?" Miranda wondered. "We're here to stop the Collectors, but the Collectors _are_ Prothean…what remains of them, anyway. They didn't exist when the Reapers were last here. So what drove the Protheans to the galactic core?"

"I don't know," Shepard said, then shook her head. "And right now, it doesn't matter. We're here for a reason. Any sign of the Collector's home world?"

"There are no planets or orbiting natural bodies large enough to hold a colony," EDI replied. "The radiation from the galactic core, supernovae and black hole phenomenon that surround it are far too great to scan at any significant range. However I believe our postulation of a 'safe zone' is correct…this appears to be the only location where the radiation is nominal enough that organic life can endure undamaged. I am detecting an anomalous signal, however…stand by."

A moment passed, then a second before she resumed. "Shepard, the signal is a large, artificial structure that matches familiar Collector signature traces. Judging by the size, I would guess that it is an immense space station, and not a ship."

"Get us closer, Joker…nice and slow. I want a better scan of it," Shepard ordered. "Don't do anything that will give us away…try and look like just another piece of debris."

* * *

><p>Things could never be easy. Then again, Del supposed, she hadn't really expected it to be <em>easy<em>…there was a reason it was called a 'suicide mission'.

Their attempt to appear as just a piece of debris hadn't lasted long before some damned automated sentries had appeared from nowhere and closed in on them. They were as relentless and dogged as any Alliance fighters, but the kinetic barriers and shielding held long enough to EDI to take them out with the small guns.

The reprieve was only short-lived. The sentries had clearly alerted the station they'd been trying to sneak up on, for barely had the last one disintegrated than an old friend was sliding out of the base, heading right for them.

Lit with the brilliant glow of the galactic core, Del Shepard's eyes looked almost yellow as she narrowed them, her gloved hands creaking slightly again as she gripped the headrest of Joker's chair. Virtually on his navigation display and visually in the distance outside the view screen, the Collector ship was unmistakable.

"Is there any chance our people could still be aboard?" Sydney asked.

"No," Liara told her. "They arrived here at minimum two hours before we did. Whatever they want with humans, the answer lies within that station. They would have offloaded them the moment they docked, especially if they anticipated us following."

"Joker, heat up the Thanix," Shepard growled. "Let's show these fuckers the wrath of God."

"Gladly, ma'am," Joker replied. "Board is green, power draw is stable, canon is ready, solution is locked…_firing!_"

A lance of light sailed away in front of them, and as fire bloomed from the side of the great ship sailing toward them, Joker whooped in triumph.

"Ha! That's what the fuck you _get_ when you mess with us!"

The smaller and faster _Normandy_ sailed in, closing the distance, its cannon igniting again and lancing a path of fire along the side of the larger vessel. Like a man with a harpoon struggling to take down a whale, the frigate tore a ragged wound along the length of the beast. Banking around for another shot, the ship all but danced out of the way of a retaliatory strike, before ripping in for the kill. The old and once feared predator shuddered in its death throes, seeming to shatter in slow motion as its former prey sank its teeth in again and again.

Then, the teeth sank into the most vital organ of all. Its eezo core compromised the Collector ship started a slow roll, shattering in a glut of momentary flame and brilliance and sending debris sailing into the _Normandy._

Joker managed to evade most of it but they were clipped, then clipped again, then finally slammed hard enough that the inertial dampeners failed a moment, sending everyone reeling to the floor at the impact. Alarms began to wail and Joker's displays flashed to red as he struggled to maintain his course, to recover control.

It was too late. Skipping like a stone, the _Normandy_ bellied into the side of the huge station, trailing smoke and debris behind it, before it finally skidded to a rough halt along the uneven hull.

Joker blinked stars from his eyes, coughing a little as he sat back. He didn't bother to backhand the blood from his eyes, swiftly taking in the reports scrawling over his displays before he half turned. Instant claws dug into his side and he gasped, pressing a hand to his newly patched ribs.

_Newly __**rebroken**__ ribs…good going Moreau. You're picking up Shepard's bad habits._

"Shepard?" he coughed, turning again, more gingerly. "Everyone all right?"

All he could see behind him was smoke and the dim outline of bodies scattered over the ground. The smoke was lessening so the air filtration systems were still working, but all he could think was _great, we've come this far and I've just __**killed**__ everyone._

"Commander?" he tried again.

Then there was motion. One form, then two, then another, started moving. Shepard was the first to push herself to her feet, wobbling a moment before she took a step, crouching down at Liara's side.

"You ok?"

"I am fine," Liara reassured as the other woman helped her up. "Just a little…rattled."

"That was quite a ride," Sydney noted, as Deirdre helped her up. Shepard moved over, crouching beside Miranda who was sitting nearby, a small gash on her head. Miranda waved her hand away weakly.

"It's not bad," she promised. "Just a scratch."

"Crew, status!" Shepard barked as she rose back to her feet. "Report in!"

"_Bit shaken up down here but I'm all right,"_ Tali's voice was the first to report, followed in short order by the others. Other than bumps and bruises, no one seemed seriously injured.

"Joker, ship status. Where are we?" Del asked.

"We're on the side of the station," Joker told her. "Doesn't seem as though they know we're here…they might think we didn't survive that blast."

"The _Normandy _has sustained heavy damage," EDI informed. "I have multiple hull breeches on the lower levels. They are fully contained with kinetic barriers, however, and the drive core is not damaged. The barriers should last indefinitely. Were it not for our new shielding, the _Normandy_ would have been lost."

"You're welcome," Sydney said with a weary grin in Del's direction.

"There are other repairs that will have to be made, however, before we can navigate or attain any level of speed," EDI added. "With damage as it is right now, I am not even sure I can break the minor gravitational hold of the station keeping us here."

"How long until repairs can be made?" Shepard asked.

"I believe, with Joker's help, I can effect enough repairs to get us into flight, however further repairs will be impossible without at least two engineers and a support crew. We could take off, but we would never make it through the relay back into civilized space."

"Well, we knew this was likely one way," Miranda murmured. Shepard shook her head.

"I'm not giving up without one hell of a goddamn fight. Joker, see Mordin to rebind those ribs, then I want you and EDI to get started on repairs until we can at least take off. With any luck we'll find our people and they can effect more extensive repairs to get us home…but we gotta find them first. EDI, find out what you can about this station and send it to the conference room. I want a full meeting in ten minutes. We need to figure out just how deep up their ass we're going to stick our fucking boots."


	66. Chapter 66

The station was not shielded from scans. It had no defensive barriers, internal alarm systems or external anti-craft weapons systems whatsoever. EDI, while not able to link to its networked computer systems, _was _still able to attain an exceedingly impressive amount of information.

The hovering holographic representation of the station slowly spun over the conference table, its light reflected back in all the eyes focused upon it. The schematic vividly displayed everything from corridors, rooms, vents and crawlspaces, to infrared heat and electromagnetic signatures. Each organic on the station was highlighted by a tiny red dot…each cybernetic or synthetic signature showing up as blue.

"This is our location," EDI informed them, marking the position on the display. "There is an odd cluster of infrared signatures here, in this large chamber. Most here are stationary. Such signatures through the rest of the station are mobile."

"Those stationary signals are evenly ranked," Liara noted. "Markedly so. Shepard, I believe those may be the colonists and the _Normandy_ crew, perhaps held in restraints or those same pods you saw on Horizon."

"What's the large image there, in that central chamber?" Tali asked, her face-plate reflecting the hologram back almost perfectly. "The green one?"

"Unknown," EDI stated. "The feedback on this object or structure is intrinsically unique, displaying both organic and inorganic components, as well as others I do not recognize. It will take me some time to fully analyze and come to a conclusion."

"_Whatever_ it is, every path and corridor seem to lead directly to it," Kasumi added.

"Which means it's important," Tali agreed. "It might be Collector version of a power core…we take it out, we take that station out."

"Just so long as we have a way _off _it before it goes," Zaeed snorted. "Suicide mission or not, I much prefer _living_ if there's any way to do so."

"Our first priority is getting our people," Shepard straightened, then activated her console, a pair of corridors on the display lighting up. "These seem to be the two most direct paths from our location to those stationary signals, where they're likely being held. EDI, are those security doors?"

"Yes, Commander. Each highlighted path is blocked from our destination by heavy blast doors. More, according to this scan, they can only be opened from with that very chamber."

"Well, that fucks _that_ up," Jack grumped.

"N-no…no, I _think _I see a way." Tali indicated one of the small vents that seemed to parallel the larger corridors. It emerged right within their destination. "A single infiltrator could get through that vent, while the hostiles are being distracted by two teams transversing the corridors. Once on the other side, they could open the doors and let the rest of the team through."

"I do not recommend this," EDI immediately responded. "The indicated vent is part of the heat transference system of the station. Temperatures within are at the boundary of tolerance for most organics. Any prolonged exposure could cause significant injury and potentially death."

Shepard's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "How long would it take someone to travel from one end of that vent to the next?"

"Calculating average foot speed and given the length of the vent shaft, approximately nine minutes," EDI said.

"And how long until they suffered injury due to the heat?"

"Minor injury would begin within approximately eight minutes," EDI replied. "Heat exhaustion would set in at that juncture. More serious injury would occur at approximately ten and a half minutes. Death would be certain within fifteen minutes of entering the shaft."

"Ninety seconds between average travel time and serious injury," Miranda murmured. "Not much room for error."

"Shepard-Commander," Legion spoke up for the first time, standing by itself in a far corner as if it were part of the décor rather than the team. As eyes shifted to it, it continued.

"Our temperature tolerances are higher than that of present organics. We could safely traverse the vent and open the security doors without damage to our hardware or systems."

"Now _there's _an idea," Zaeed approved. "Send the big fucking _toaster_ in."

"No," Tali protested, then looked at Del. "Shepard, I can do it. I'm small enough to move quickly, and I have the best chance to get the doors open in time."

"_And_ you could die in there," Sydney pointed out. Tali looked at the blonde pointedly.

"We could _all _die in there," she reminded her. "Everyone's lives depend on getting those doors open. Ours, our crew, the colonists…everyone here is willing to give their lives to this mission, and I am no exception."

"Mei Mei-"

"Jie Jie, you _know_ I am right," Tali insisted, turning her attention to Del. "Let me do this. I can _do_ this."

"It is illogical to risk injury or death to one, when the same task can be performed by another with no such risk," Legion stated. "We will not be damaged. Creator Zorah may be significantly damaged."

"No offense, Shepard, but I'm not quite ready yet to put my life into the hands of a geth," Jacob protested. "All it has to do is _not_ open the doors, and we're all screwed."

Risk one life, or risk _all_ their lives? Shepard was trying desperately to believe and trust the geth, but old wounds took a long time to heal. Trust was not easily earned…_especially_ not for Del, who had grown up without even knowing the _meaning_ of the word.

Her dark eyes brooding, she looked from Tali to the geth, then back again. Finally she steeled herself.

"Legion will go into the vent," she stated, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Whether it's opening the doors or covering our backs during a firefight, we're going to have to trust it sometime, and the more people we can get through this without injury, the best chance we have of getting home again."

She paused momentarily, regarding each face that was turned toward her before she nodded and cleared her throat. "All right. The rest of us will split into two teams and take the corridors. I will head Alpha Team. Miranda, you will lead Beta Team-"

"_Her?_ No one wants to fucking follow _her_-" Jack began, only to slam her mouth shut with an audible click as Shepard's eyes fixed hers.

"This is _not_ up for debate, Jack," she warned. "Miranda will lead Beta Team. Jacob, Mordin, Garrus, Kasumi, Samara, Thane, and Zaeed…you will be on Beta. Grunt, Tali, Sydney, Deirdre, Jack, and Liara, you are with me on Alpha. We will hit our respective corridors at the same time Legion enters the vents. Blow through any hostiles and regroup within the blast doors. We will then assess and address how best to free our people, if they _are_ in fact in there. Are there any questions?"

Silence. After a long moment, Shepard nodded. "Not many could have made it this far. You are each the best and brightest at what you do, and everything else aside…it's been an honor to work with each and every one of you. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you and we just may make it back home. EDI, will you be able to maintain contact with us throughout the station?"

"Affirmative, Shepard."

"Good. Keep analyzing the station and that strange signature. Let me know the instant you find anything new or relevant. All right, that's it. We hit dirt in ten, people. Suit up and let's get this done."

* * *

><p>It was like walking into a hell of a most literal sort. The dry, almost molded landscape, the brilliant yellows and reds of the sky as a thousand dying suns whirled in an endless dance. Shepard thought of the tiny gold cross tucked safely beneath her hard-suit and imagined something like this would turn even the hardest of hearts toward at least some <em>hope<em> of a deity.

As she moved away from the _Normandy _with her team, Shepard glanced toward Miranda and her group that were headed in almost the opposite direction. She gave her XO an encouraging nod. Within her mind, a soft mantra had formed the background to her thoughts. Not a chant or a prayer, but a simple list of names that repeated endlessly.

Helen.

Gabriella.

Kenneth.

Kelly.

_Nan._

That last one tightened her jaw. Her crew had only been taken hours before, but Nan had disappeared months ago. Though she knew it was foolish to hold on to hope that the woman still lived, some part of her continued to grip it tightly.

_No distractions. You know the mission, you know the goal. Never stop pushing. Never stop fighting. Go home alive._

She saw Legion disappearing into the vent a moment before they stepped through into their own corridor. She was putting a lot of goddamn trust on the table…putting an awful lot of lives into its hands. If it was a mistake, she would likely not have the chance to live to regret it.

"Weapons hot, biotics ready," she ordered. "They're going to know we're here pretty goddamn quick. Take out everything that's not us and keep pushing."

Grunt gave a low, eager laugh, a gleam in his eye behind his helmet. "Let's do some _damage."_

* * *

><p>"<em>Miranda! Report!"<em> Shepard barked into her radio, a breath before she half rose from her cover and sprayed another barrage of gunfire down the corridor. They could see the doors just in the distance but the drones had been insanely persistent, the small team fighting for every inch of progress.

"_We're nearly to the doors,"_ Miranda's breathless voice filled her ears. _"They're pushing constantly but we're taking them down!" _

"We're pinned just in sight of the objective," Shepard replied, the bark of Grunt's shotgun punctuated the boy's bellowing laugh. He was like a kid in a fucking candy store. "Legion! Status!"

"_Fifteen seconds to objective, Shepard-Commander,"_ the geth replied.

"All right, we're pushing!"

Gesturing at Sydney she pointed two fingers toward the right before she called over to the biotics.

"Li, Deeds, I'm gonna need a wall! Jack, it's time to bowl and you'd better not give me any fucking 7-10 split again! Grunt…right up the middle, big guy! Let's put the fear of the name Urdnot into these fuckers!"

"Ha!" he replied. Almost as one, he, Sydney, and Shepard swung over their low cover, opening up with everything they had. Bullets chewed madly through the oncoming drones, and several collapsed. More sailed into the walls of the corridor with bone-crushing force as Jack drove a biotic slam through the crowd.

A breath later, a blue sheen fell down just in front of them as Liara and Deirdre deflected the torrent of return fire.

They were just dropping the last of them, nearly to the door, when suddenly Liara's voice lifted in warning.

"We have incoming on our six!"

Shepard spun around, aiming her fire between the two asari as another host of drones charged up the corridor. They had nowhere to go. The blast doors were at their backs now, and unless Legion got them open sheer numbers would very quickly lead to their slaughter.

Liara shifted the scope of her barrier, switching it from fore to aft. As she did so, Deirdre sent a shockwave toward the charging Collectors, knocking several flying. Sydney plucked them out of the air with her sniper, each precise shot shattering a skull or splitting a chest…and _still_ they came.

"Legion! _We need these fucking doors open_!" Shepard all but roared.

"_Shepard, we're pinned at the doors!"_ Miranda reported frantically. _"We're being pressed, hard! We can't keep this up much longer!"_

Cold moved through Shepard's veins even as flame from her rifle muzzle flashed light over her face-plate.

_Good going, Del. You've just killed __**everyone **__by trusting that piece of-_

Behind her, the massive doors suddenly released and began to open. Halting in her fire a moment she shoved Grunt's arm, pushing him that direction before she grabbed Tali by the shoulder, all but throwing her that way as well.

"_Move! Move! Inside!" _

Quickly the group retreated past the doors, Shepard remaining in her place and laying down cover fire almost shoulder to shoulder with Jack until the rest had passed within.

"We got you!" Sydney called out. "Move!"

Halting their firing, the pair turned and rushed toward the doors as those already within took their turn to lay down cover. Shoving Jack in ahead of her, Shepard was within a breath later, whirling and rejoining the barrage until the doors snapped shut again.

Tali had rushed to join Legion at the other door, the geth working at a console rapidly as he attempted to open them to admit the other team. Shepard ran over, slamming her fist into the still sealed portal with a frustrated, "_**C'mon**__! Get these fuckers open!"_

They parted with a sudden jolt, Jacob, Garrus, Thane, Zaeed, and Kasumi all but spilling through. Shepard indiscriminately grabbed arms, hauling them in with no attempt to be gentle. Mordin and then Samara ducked past, then finally Miranda. Tali, Liara, Sydney and Garrus rejoined Shepard at the door as Legion now fought to close them again, more than a dozen weapons leaping into fire to suppress the oncoming drones, to prevent them from flooding in after them.

Del heard a cry of pain distantly, the sound almost lost beneath the deluge of bullets, the hiss of thermal clips as they fell like rain to the ground. The doors suddenly jolted halfway closed, paused, and then jolted again, this time sliding shut and latching.

"This room is sealed," Legion reported as silence replaced the gunfire. "They will not be able to access this location through these access-ways."

"Good work, Legion," Del panted, suddenly very aware of her rushing heartbeat, the shortness of her breath, the tension burning her limbs.

"Shepard," Liara's voice drew her to turn around, and she blinked. The asari was crouched on the ground, holding on to Tali who had dropped into a sit. The quarian was clutching her arm, blood leaking in slow streams across her suit.

Shepard was at her side in an instant, down on one knee as she set her rifle on the ground. "Mei Mei!"

"I am all right, Shepard," Tali tried to reassure, but her voice was taut with pain. "My suit clamps are sealed…it's not in a vital area…"

Mordin moved down beside her as well, gingerly drawing the girl's hand away from the wound and regarding it. "Wound itself not serious, no significant blood-loss. Possible nerve damage, doubtless muscular, dominant arm…her weapon skills will be compromised. Biggest danger in suit compromise-"

"I can _still _fire a gun!" Tali said hotly. "It barely even _hurts_-"

"Hush, Mei Mei, no one's doubting you," Shepard told her. Gripping the girl's shoulder affectionately she looked around. Zaeed and Jacob both appeared to be wounded, though not seriously so. Still…it reduced their efficiency, and if Tali were to become ill from this-

Sydney, Miranda, Grunt and Kasumi had moved off from the group to scout their surroundings, the blonde former specialist swiftly returning. "Shepard, you have to see this."

Rising, Shepard and the others followed after her, Liara helping Tali to her feet, making sure the girl was steady, before they trailed after.

The space they were in was large, easily the size of the _Normandy_, and lined with the same pods they had encountered before. Above them, a strange series of pipes and tubes rose from them and disappeared into the far wall. While the walls and the pods had the same strange, almost organic feel of the Collector tech they'd heretofore come across, the tubes reminded her of the Reaper derelict…dark, definitively alien, somehow _alive._

As she neared the rank of pods nearest the ground, she lifted a hand and unsnapped her helmet fastens, drawing it off. Already damp with sweat from their exertions thus far, Shepard could all but feel her pores open up even further. It was _hot_ in here…not, perhaps, as hot as it had been in the vents, but hot all the same. The air had a stifling, stagnant, almost roasted feel to it. There was no humidity; indeed, the lack of any sort of moisture almost immediately began to irritate her sinuses.

Despite this, the clear fronts of the pods were glistening with fog and condensation, beads of water or some similarly clear fluid oozing down their sides as if the heat were making them sweat just as badly. Moving up to the nearest one, Shepard lifted her glove and swiped a clean path, peering within.

A human woman, unfamiliar, was slumped within. She looked dead…no, _asleep._ She was moving a little. Shepard could see her breathing. Squinting a bit, Del's gaze landed on the back of the pod, where some strange shimmer seemed to be moving down the surface.

As the shimmer began to increase, sliding down the inner sides and even dripping from above, a memory clicked in her brain.

Those tiny robotic insects she'd found on the Collector ship, the ones she'd found crawling over the corpses. She'd taken a small sample of them for Mordin, but all he had been able to glean was that each of the miniscule synthetics was simply designed to produce and secrete an infinitesimal amount of a strong acidic substance, designed to break down organic material. His guess, given the location where Shepard had found them, was that they were some form of housekeeping process, implemented to efficiently dispose of the dead used in the Collector's experiments but still preserve some of the genetic material for later chemical comparison tests.

Even as awareness dawned in Shepard's mind, the woman within the pod lifted her head a little, eyelids fluttering in reaction to the first drips upon her head. For a half a breath, her eyes met Shepard's in confused bafflement, before the drip became a steady stream, a virtual deluge of the tiny things pouring over her head and face.

She began to scream in fear and pain. Shepard's fist slammed into the front of glass, her eyes widening.

_Oh, my God…her skin is __**melting**_!

Frantically she began to pry at the pod, trying to get it open. First, she desperately sought for a seam or a fasten that would release it, then tried simple brute strength as she pummeled the edge of the structure, hauling on it until her muscles corded. The screams filtering from within were muted but horrible, a wail of mortal fear, the calling siren of death.

"_NO!_" Shepard slammed her fist into the unyielding pod again, her fingers then pressing against the transparency as the woman's cries finally halted, her melting body dissolving into a simple gray fluid that began to drain out of the base of the pod.

"My God," she heard Kasumi croak behind her. "Oh…oh my _God_…all those _people_…"

"Shepard!" Garrus's voice snapped her head around, the Turian standing only a few feet away at the next pod. He, too, had wiped the condensation away from the transparency to see what was within. "It's Chambers!"

"Dr. Chakwas is over here!" Liara called, further down the ranks.

"Get these _fucking things open_! _**Now**__!_" Del ordered, drawing her rifle. Reaching the turian's side she slammed the butt of it into the side of the pod, beating it with all of her strength. Within, the shimmer had already appeared, beginning to shift along the back of it just behind the confused, blurry-eyed yeoman.

Another slam, then another, before she heard something crack. All around her, she could hear the others doing the same, beating, prying, and working at the pods they could reach, desperate to save their occupants. Dropping her rifle she dug her fingers in again, feeling the front shift…then give way.

The smell as it swung open reminded her instantly of the thorian thralls…a heady, decomposing mix of mushrooms and rancid asparagus. Grabbing Kelly around the waist as the weak redhead slumped forward, Shepard hauled her out and away, turning and passing her to Tali. The quarian awkwardly lowered her to the ground as Shepard moved back over, grabbing her rifle again and assailing yet another pod.

Dr. Chakwas spilled into her arms a few tense moment later, the last to be pulled free. All around, her team were helping dazed and gasping prisoners. Assisting Chakwas to sit, Shepard cupped her face firmly, peering into eyes that weren't quite focused.

"_Helen!_ Helen, can you hear me?"

"What…" the doctor murmured, her gaze struggling to clarify. "C-Commander?"

"It's _me,_ Helen. You're _safe_," Del said urgently. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

"Sick…a little. Weak…" the doctor mumbled in return, before blinking at her. "Shepard? You…you're _really_ here? You…came for us?"

"Of _course_ I came for you!" Shepard told her. "Can you move? Can you stand?"

"I-I _think_ so."

Shepard helped her to her feet. Over a dozen had been pulled from the pods, a quick glance showing that they were just as weak and dazed…but seemed to be recovering. They were all her crew, with only one or two unfamiliar faces among the group. Colonists, perhaps, or travelers…unfortunate human souls who had found themselves locked in the wrong sights.

Kelly had managed to rise but was clinging to Garrus as if she would collapse at any moment, sobbing wearily in thick, almost moaning breaths. Holding Chakwas's shoulders, Del kept her steady, dipping her head a little to meet her eyes.

"Just take your time," she urged. The older woman's eyes were swimming with tears, her voice low and husky as she spoke.

"It was horrible," she murmured. "All those people, everyone…we couldn't move, couldn't breathe…they put us in those pods. I could…I could hear the screaming, the praying…the _begging._ Dying…so _many_ of them dying…"

She sucked in a sob and then seemed to steel herself, looking upward. "They dissolved them all with those…those tiny little robots. Turned them into that sludge, then pumped it through those tubes."

"Where? Do you know where? Or _why?_"

"No, I…I don't. They clearly want our genetic material but…oh, the _screaming…_"

Shepard gripped hold of her, hugging her tightly, before she looked over the dazed and ill faces gathered around. Her throat was thick, and a trembling knot of nausea was clenching her gut like a vengeful hand.

Her crew, saved…but so few out of the how many hundreds of thousands? A pittance, a feeble handful of souls out of the masses that had been taken, slaughtered, meeting an end she would not have wished on her worst enemy.

The terrified eyes of that poor woman who had been liquefied right in front of her passed through her mind, but after only a moment the gaze changed into that of Nan. The image of that poor, sweet face melting…that dear, kind voice screaming out in agony…seemed to hit her like a knife to the gut, and her eyes closed a moment under the force of it.

"Shepard?" Miranda asked, and Del's dark eyes snapped open again. Ignoring Miranda, she gripped Helen's arm a moment, then stepped away from her, pointing.

"Tali, Zaeed. I need you two to get these people back to the _Normandy_," she ordered. "We can't afford to turn back and they're too weak and disoriented to be any use in a fight. Tali, once aboard I need you to start helping with the repairs as your wound allows…Donnelly and Daniels as well. Your priority is getting her back together enough to hit that relay back to home space."

"I…understood, Commander," the quarian straightened. Unshipping one of her prized machine pistols, Shepard took Tali's hand, pressing it around the grip and clasping it between her own at the same time.

"Here. She'll treat you good," Del promised. "And she's easy to fire one-handed. You can _do_ this Tali. I wouldn't put the crew into any but the best of hands."

Tali straightened, nodded. As Shepard released her grip, the quarian stepped forward and hugged her tightly a moment, before stepping back again. As EDI directed the quarian and mercenary on the safest route back toward the _Normandy_, Shepard activated her omni-tool and drew up the station schematics.

"The rest of you, gather round. We've still got a fuck of a _long_ way to go."

* * *

><p>Liara could only remember one previous instance when her biotics had been pushed to such limits. Years ago, on Feros, Shepard had been poisoned by one of the Thorian's thralls. Not only had the fight against the geth, the thralls, and even the colonists taxed her reserves, but Shepard herself eventually fell into delusion, hallucination, the swelling of her brain caused by the poison driving her most literally mad.<p>

She had attacked them, and Liara had barely managed to snag her in a biotic field…and had been forced to hold her there until help finally arrived from the _Normandy_. When Wrex had taken over the field Liara had nearly collapsed, her energy utterly spent.

Now, even with Deirdre's help -the two women bolstering each other's efforts- she could feel her body trembling with exertion, feel the exhaustion gripping every fiber of her being with its cold, tenacious claws.

Both asari were visibly struggling, forcing one foot in front of the other. Around them, the relentless plague of the seeker swarms was being held at bay only by their rapidly dwindling energies. Shepard, Sydney, and Grunt were occupied trying to cut down the drones that seemed to rush at them without end, protecting the two helpless asari even as _they_ fought to protect them all.

Miranda and the others had once again taken a different path, attempting to split the attentions of their opponents and insure at least one group had a chance of making it through.

Sweat damping her face, Liara felt her muscles waver and grit her teeth, falling to one knee with a cry before forcing herself up. _On_. She _had_ to continue on. If she fell now Deirdre would not be able to maintain the field and it would collapse. The swarms would be upon them in an instant. They would _all_ die.

The door…so tantalizingly close and yet so impossibly far. She could hear her companion's rough, desperate gasps as she, too, fought to endure to reach it. The sound of gunfire sounded so distant and muffled, Shepard's shouted orders coming from another galaxy.

Then, the exit was there, and they were through. Moving far enough to allow the others in, Liara fell to her knees again even as Sydney accessed the door controls, closing the portal and sealing it.

As the heavy doors began to shut, a single Collector drone launched itself through, eyes flaring with yellow light as its carapace seemed to swell and crack. It crashed into the young krogan hard enough to knock him to his back. As he fell, however, Grunt grinned and jammed his shotgun between his body and Harbinger's.

A fountain of shattered carapace and black ichor flashed up from the Collector's back, flame licking through its body as the shotgun went off. The krogan's muscles steeled as he shoved the beast off of him, sending him crashing into the corner as he got to his feet.

Seeing the short corridor between them and the next rendezvous point appeared empty, Shepard slapped Grunt's arm. "Go. Make sure the rest of the way to the next door is clear," she ordered. As he headed off, Del went to Liara's side, Sydney moving toward Deirdre.

"You ok?" Shepard asked, removing her helmet and setting it aside as she helped Liara to sit against the wall. The asari looked flushed, her skin damp and her hands notably shaking. She gave Shepard a weary smile.

"Nothing a good night's sleep and a lot of electrolytes won't fix," she said. "I will…I will be strong enough to stand in a few moments, Shepard…and I will still be able to shoot. However I am afraid that Deirdre and I will be out of the biotics business for the rest of this mission."

"You did good," Shepard said, laying a soft hand on her love's cheek. Liara's look turned slightly coy.

"Oh, so you are now glad you brought me along?" she hedged softly. At Del's glower she smiled weakly. "Well. Whether or not you are glad, _I _am glad. There is no place I would rather be right now."

"I can think of a few _thousand_ places _I'd_ rather be," Del told her. Liara knew it was an attempt at humor, but Shepard's heart was not in it. The human woman looked drawn, coiled up so tightly even her eyes seemed to smolder under the pressure of it.

Then, abruptly, Shepard's head snapped around. Following her gaze, Liara saw the limp Collector laying in the corner, the glow in its eyes still visible, though faint. It seemed to be looking at them, one hand gesturing weakly.

It was alive.

As Shepard rose, already pulling out her pistol, Liara knew that it _wouldn't_ be for long.

When the shot came, however, it made her entire body jolt with horror.

* * *

><p><strong>DO IT.<strong>

Shepard's head snapped around as the all too familiar voice traced its itching fingers over her brain, down her spine. Though it no longer caused her pain, the sensation was far from pleasant and always seemed to coat her very soul with a thin layer of grease.

Rising from her crouch at Liara's side, she drew her pistol. The Harbinger drone that Grunt had shot was still alive, gesturing weakly from where it lay slumped against the corner. His voice, however, was far from weak.

**DO IT NOW. THIS IS YOUR PATH.**

"My path?" Shepard asked, lifting her pistol to aim at the abomination's skull. "What the fuck are you talking about, my p-"

She felt the unmistakable snap of pain rape its way through her thigh, punching through the pads of her hard-suit and scattering fire in a careening jolt through her body. She heard Liara's cry, more of surprise than anything else.

Even as her leg seemed to wrench out from under her she twisted, striking the ground hard with her side and her shoulder, pistol instinctively pointing toward the source of the shot. Nausea slicked her throat a moment, dizziness swimming her eyes from the initial shock of the wound, even as she felt the hair-thin needles of her hard-suits automated medical systems slip into her veins, injecting painkillers and antibiotics into her blood.

The barrel of her pistol trembled faintly even as her vision cleared, and she firmed it on her target half a heartbeat before recognition slammed its way with agonizing force into her mind.

The shooter's jaw was tight, eyes grim, weapon aimed inexorably toward Shepard's unhelmeted forehead. Deep inside, some part of Del began to scream, but when the word actually escaped her lips it was only soft, fraught with disbelief.

"_S-Sydney…?"_


	67. Chapter 67

A/N:

So, I decided instead of a chapter today, I'm going to regale you with various tales of my numerous occasions of filing tax returns. The first time I filed a return, I was about sixteen and had been working…

**trails off, notices the thousands of hostile glares, clears throat nervously**

Ah…uh…I mean…ahem. Uh…on second thought, I think I'll continue DE instead…

Thanks to Bladhaire for her help once again. Thanks to my wonderful readers for their patience (and not tracking me down at home to sever a few of my favorite limbs).

Quick note on a couple of points that have been brought up repeatedly:

Yes, I do plan to cover the events of Arrival.

Yes, I _really_ AM a girl. Really. Or else I've been horribly horribly lied to my entire life by…_everyone. _

Oh, and another cliffhanger at the end. You're WELCOME.

On we go!

* * *

><p><em>Ten years ago, Earth:<em>

"_Sydney!_ Sydney, wake up!"

Shepard, ignoring the aching throb in the middle of her face, the streams of blood spilling from her broken nose, shouted toward the limp pilot even as she struggled to draw her boot-knife. Feeling the grinding bones in her leg, she clenched her teeth, pressing tightly against her locked restraints. The water was flooding in rapidly, already past her knees and crawling eagerly toward her waist, biting with sharp frigid teeth. Half seeing motion behind her, she turned her head.

Hawkins was struggling with his own restraint. Just to his left, she could see the rent in the side of the shuttle…large enough a body could pass through. Large enough they'd be completely swamped by the sea in only a few seconds.

"Hawkins, help me! Sydney's out…_Hawkins!"_

She gaped in stunned horror as the man released his restraint. Without even a glance in her direction, he forced his way out of the tortured rent in the shuttle and into the sea.

Her gut trembled with fury. She'd never liked the man…he was a slick-ass little weasel if she'd ever seen one…but she would never have expected him to _abandon them_!

The water was now to her chest, rising far too swiftly. With a growl of rage she ducked down again, head disappearing under water as she strained once more for her boot-knife. Finally feeling the smooth handle under her fingers she hauled it out, lifting her head with a gasp. The sea was to her chin now. Glancing over she saw Sydney's head was all but submerged, the blonde leaning limp in her restraints.

Slashing through the belts holding her in place, Shepard quickly grabbed the woman's chin, forcing her mouth and nose above water again. Making short work of the pilot's harness she braced herself, hauling the woman free.

"Hang on," she gasped, taking a deep breath, just as the shuttle finally swamped.

The frigid waters of the Atlantic seemed to instantly leach all vitality from her limbs, setting an aching, frozen fire through her bones. Arm hooked around Rasler's chest, she struggled to haul her through the rent in the sinking shuttle, ignoring the bent and ruined metal as it tore at her arms and clothes. Finally breaking through, she kicked desperately for the surface, each stroke only wakening a dull throb through her busted leg.

The shimmering of sunlight seemed an impossible distance above. Already her lungs were burning, her leg on fire though the rest of her felt frozen solid. Numb was seeping into her mind, the unconscious blonde a dead-weight that seemed only to be dragging her deeper.

_Let her go. Save yourself. There's nothing you can do for her. You hold on, you both die._

The moment the thought passed through her mind, she hated herself for it. In almost defiance, she gripped the blonde even harder, renewing her efforts. No. No, she _was not_ going to die here. Rasler _was not _going to die here.

_You hear that, you fucking pain in the ass? You are going to live! You need to feel every bit of the ass-kicking I intend to give you before graduation, you goddamn stubborn bitch!_

Air broke over her in a rush as she crested the surface, frantically gulping for oxygen. It came in a burning rush that was delicious to feel, only to be replaced by water again as she sagged below the surface. Feeling the cold flood down her mouth and nose she clawed upward, thrusting her face back into the air, coughing and gasping frantically.

Rolling onto her back, she hauled Sydney's head above water as well, keeping one arm wrapped under her arms and around her chest. For a moment, all Shepard could do was float there, coughing and sucking in lungfuls of sweet, gritty, polluted air.

She couldn't, however, revel in life and exhaustion too long. The water was far too cold and they'd both die of hypothermia if they remained. Craning her head a little, she spotted the shore a mile off, and set her jaw.

By the time the pair neared shore, Shepard was not sure if her limbs were even moving. The tide had conspired to push her back a stroke for every two she managed, and the cold had done the rest. Even her broken leg had disappeared into unending numb.

Her fingers barely worked as she tried digging them into the sand, using the last of her reserves to haul herself and her friend as far out of the water as she was able.

Collapsing on the shore, her head swam with dizzy exhaustion, and for a long moment she could only lay there, breathing, trying to focus on the fact that she was still alive. Then she shifted, ignoring faintly burning muscles as she leaned over her friend.

Rasler had a nasty cut on her head, splitting one brow. The salt water had washed it clean but it was deep…Del was pretty sure she could see bone. The blonde's lips were blue with cold but she seemed to be breathing. Taking hold of her chin, ignoring the ratcheting chatter of her teeth, Shepard gave her head a ginger shake. "Sydney…"

No response. Patting her cheek firmly she tried gain. "Sydney…c'mon, wake up."

Nothing.

Lifting her head, looking along the cliff-side, she could hear the swooping approach of engines…search and rescue, most likely. Looking back at the blonde she slapped her firmly.

"_Rasler!"_

Sydney's eyes finally opened, peering at Del through a haze of bleary confusion. Shepard gave her a weak smile. "Hey," she said with relief. "It's a g-g-g-ood thing I like you, R-R-Rasler, or I may have let-t-t-t your sorry ass d-d-drown."

Sydney managed a faint smile, her own body wracked with shivers as it warmed up just enough to actually react to the cold. "…knew I c-c-c-could c-c-c-count on y-y-y-you," she murmured through violently chattering teeth.

Coughing faintly, her lungs feeling all but abraded with the salt water she'd inhaled, Shepard leaned over and feebly hugged the other woman, the sound of engines getting slowly louder. Resting her cheek against Sydney's she murmured, "Only alw-w-w-ways, you b-b-b-bitch. Only _alw-w-w-ways…"_

* * *

><p><em>Present day, Collector Station:<em>

"_Don't,"_ Sydney warned, her second pistol in her hand in a flash and aimed at Liara, as the asari tensed and began to move forward, intending to get to her feet. Both Shepard's jaw and grip on her pistol tightened, even as the asari froze.

"Syd, knock it off," Shepard growled. "_Think_ about what you're doing…you _don't _want to do this."

Behind the blonde in the corridor, Grunt reappeared. Drawn by the gunshots, the young krogan had his shotgun aimed squarely for Sydney's back. The memory, however, of taking a risky shot and nearly putting a bullet in Del's head stayed his hand.

"Shepard?" he growled.

"Don't," Shepard barked. "Don't do anything, Grunt. Sydney, lower your weapons! Put your goddamn guns down, Syd-"

**ELIMINATE SHEPARD. IF SHE WILL NOT JOIN US SHE WILL DIE.**

Harbinger's voice pierced the heads of both human women as the dying drone in the corner lifted its dim eyes.

"Don't fucking listen to him!" Del ordered. "You're stronger than this and a goddamn fine soldier! Put your weapons _down_!"

Sydney's muscles were corded, her teeth bare as she glared at Shepard. The wounded marine could see, however, the faint trembling of the muzzle aimed at her, and the fact the blonde hadn't immediately pulled the trigger upon order gave her hope.

"Put them down," she ordered again.

"This is the way it _has_ to be," Sydney spat. "You don't understand, Del…this is the way it _has to be_! You had your chance and…you'll ruin _everything_-"

**ELIMINATE SHEPARD.**

Sydney took half a step forward, and for a moment her finger actually tightened on the trigger before it loosened slightly again. Shepard's own finger tensed, her pistol still aimed at Syd's head in mirror of the blonde.

"Sydney, please…put it down," Deirdre urged softly. "Shepard is your friend. You do not want to hurt her, or Liara. _Please,_ love…"

Shepard saw Sydney waver a bit more.

**ELIMINATE SHEPARD.**

"_Shut…the fuck…up!"_ Sydney grit weakly through her teeth, even as her finger tensed again.

**ELIMINATE…SHEPARD. THIS…IS YOUR PATH. **

"_No!"_

One pistol wavered a bit and lowered…the one aimed at Liara. Deirdre had pushed herself to her feet.

**ELIMINATE…**

Was it just her, or did Harbinger sound like he was getting weaker? It was clearly dying. Maybe if she could distract her friend long enough, when it finally succumbed Syd could break free.

Taking a chance, Shepard carefully managed to get to her feet. Thanks to the painkillers her suit had pumped her with, the wound was nothing more than the vague presence of pain. She felt momentarily dizzy, but nothing too bad.

As she rose, Sydney tensed again, her slightly sagging aim snapping back upward to focus on Shepard's head.

"_No-"_ Liara gasped, one hand lifting slightly as if she meant to reach out and snag the gun before it could fire.

"Syd, listen to me," Shepard said firmly, her aim still firmly fixed as well. Inside, she was praying fervently that she would not have to kill her own best friend. "Harbinger is a liar. He wants to kill everyone, destroy _everything_. Not just me, and Liara…he wants to kill _Deirdre_ too! I _know _you care about her! Don't make her watch you do this. Don't make her watch me have to take you out, Syd! Think this through! Push his voice out of your head!"

"I c-…I _can't…_"

Shepard moved closer, her wounded leg wavering slightly as she put her weight on it, the torn muscle unable to work properly, to support her fully. Sydney tensed again, visibly struggling against her conflicting urges to both eliminate and save her friend. Shepard's determination had firmed to granite in her eyes.

"Are you fucking _kidding_ me? How many times did I think I couldn't do something and you were right there to smack me in the head? Well this is me smacking _you_ in the head for once, Rasler! Now goddamn _fight this_!"

"Del…st-step back," Sydney warned. "I d-don't want to shoot you, I can't…"

"Don't make me kill you, Sydney," Shepard murmured in a low, taut voice, her eyes steel. "Please…put the goddamn gun down."

"D-Del... I... _can't._.."

A wave of blue buffeted against the pistol that was wavering around a point between Shepard's eyes, as Deirdre desperately gathered the last dregs of her biotics. The blow was incredibly weak, but it was enough to knock Sydney's aim off to the side. Not giving the other woman even a second to recover, Shepard's left fist suddenly darted out and landed a very solid jab right on the point of Sydney's chin.

Under normal circumstances Del would have found the accompanying _crack_to be extremely satisfying, however there was nothing even remotely satisfying about watching her friend's eyes roll back in her head as she started to collapse to the floor. Even as the blonde sagged, Grunt was there, throwing an arm around her.

"I got her." Lowering the unconscious woman to the floor he looked up at Shepard. "Nice hit, she's out cold. I'll keep an eye on her."

With a weak nod, Shepard shipped her pistol, idly flexing her left hand and wincing as she felt the bones grating together in one of her fingers. Steeling herself, she grasped the finger and gently pulled it straight, grunting softly at the sharp stab of pain. Flexing her hand again she noted the bones weren't grating anymore.

_I hope Chakwas wasn't serious about that full body cast,_ some numb part of her thought.

She took a weak step back, nearly toppling as her wounded leg buckled abruptly. Liara caught hold of her, steadying her before leading her to sit against the wall. A glance at the drone in the corner as she did so showed it had expired, now little more than a puddle of acid.

"Shepard," Liara breathed, cupping her face a moment, her hands trembling, before she focused her attention to the wound in her thigh. Deirdre was beside the unconscious Rasler, looking pale from exhaustion, brows knit in misery.

_Of __**course **__she's miserable. How would I feel if it had been Liara who had done such a thing? _

She thought about how close she'd come to blowing her friend away and felt sick to her stomach…not that her _alive_ was much better.

Indoctrination. How had Sydney become _indoctrinated_? All the reports that they had so far on the process…pitifully few, considering…said the same thing. Indoctrination was irreversible. The only sentient creature known to have fallen under the Reaper's sway and recovered from it was Shiala, the asari they had encountered on Feros…and the only reason anyone could tell for how _she_ had managed to do so, was that the Thorian's own method of 'indoctrination' had somehow superseded it.

Perhaps it would have been kinder to pull the trigger.

Liara had cracked open a pack of medi-gel and was using it to pack the wound and seal it, halting the bleeding. "This is bad, Del," she murmured, looking up at her love with solemn, weary blue eyes. Shepard knew that Li didn't mean just the wound.

"Doesn't matter. There's a job that still needs doing," she replied wearily. The moment Liara finished sealing the wound she was pushing herself up again, the asari doing her best to steady her until she found her feet.

"How is she?" Del asked softly, looking over toward Deirdre and Grunt. The former had placed bind-cuffs on the human woman's wrists, restraining her in case she woke and did something stupid.

"She is still unconscious, but her breathing is strong," Deirdre told her. "I...how could she…"

"We'll figure it out later. For right now we have to get her someplace secure," Del replied. "Grunt. I need you to get Syd and Deirdre back to the _Normandy_. Li and I will go on ahead and rendezvous with the others."

"Battle master?" he asked, looking irritated as he straightened. Like the krogan boy he was, he viewed being sent back as a sign that Shepard didn't think he was suited for this battle. Shepard limped over and gripped his arm.

"Grunt, Deirdre is utterly exhausted. This is no small task I ask of you. You will have to find a way around the swarms. You will have to protect them both against whatever the Collectors may throw at you. I don't know if even Urdnot Wrex could manage to do this."

Gripping the edge of one of his head plates, she tugged his head lightly, meeting his eyes. "Grunt, she is my _krant_," she told him. "I am putting the life of my krant into your hands."

He blinked at her. Being sent back was one thing. A battle master putting the lives of their krant into another's hands was the highest form of respect and trust. He nodded slowly.

"I am honored, battle master. No blood of hers shall spill while mine still flows."

She clasped his hand, nodding. "Get them back to the _Normandy _safe. Put her in the brig, under guard, then have Chakwas take a look at her if she's able to."

"I will."

Making sure the krogan and asari had enough clips and arms, Shepard reluctantly left them there, refastening her helmet and limping down the corridor toward the rendezvous, with Liara at her side. The moment the others had vanished around a corner, Del faltered, putting one hand on the wall as she hung her head, breath coming in ragged gasps a moment.

_Sydney. Fuck…fuck…why Sydney? I could have killed my best friend. My best friend could have killed __**me**__. What will happen to her now? I don't know if we can even help her…_

"Shepard…" Liara murmured in gentle understanding, her hand resting on the shoulder-pad of Shepard's hard-suit. The human woman took a deep breath, straightening with a nod.

"I'm all right," she said, renewing her grip on her resolve. "Let's get to that rendezvous and get this done."

* * *

><p>"Whatever that giant green signature is, this tunnel leads right to it," Miranda reported. Under her helmet, the XO's hair was slicked with sweat, her cheeks reddened with exertion. Everyone was on the trembling edge of exhaustion, most wounded, and they still had a long way to go.<p>

They were gathered in a momentary safe-zone, though it wouldn't take long for the Collectors to finish cutting their way through the huge doors behind them. In front, a small handful of those hovering platforms were docked at the edge of a yawning chasm. The chasm stretched off into the distance before curving out of sight, and was lined with those same black pipes and tubes that had been connected to the pods.

"_Shepard, I have not yet identified what the signature is, however I believe I am close to an answer,"_ EDI supplied from Garrus's omni-tool. _"This station's main core drive is in the same location. An explosion in the control panel of the core would create a shockwave strong enough to over-stabilize the core, and bring down the entire station. I suggest a timer of at least ten minutes to allow for return time and a safe departure of the _Normandy_."_

"Understood," Del said. "Did the crew return?"

"_Yes, Tali'Zorah and Zaeed Massani have returned with the others. They seem to be recovering and have started assisting Joker and I with repairs. Dr. Chakwas is tending to Tali's wound right now."_

"Be advised, Grunt will be back shortly with Deirdre and Sydney. He'll inform you of anything you need to know when they arrive. Once they're on board and the _Normandy_ is able to attain lift I want you to move to a closer LZ. I want the shortest run possible between this final chamber and our airlock, dong ma?"

"_Understood, Shepard."_

"All right, Liara, Miranda, you two are with me. We're going to take a platform into the central chamber and blow this place to hell. The rest of you need to hold this position. Garrus, you'll be in charge. They'll get through that door soon but you need to keep them from following us. I'll signal you when the detonator is set, and that is your cue to get the fuck out, am I understood?"

"Yes ma'am. Dig in firm then run like hell."

She gave him a tired smile, then clapped him on the arm. "You're a good man, Garrus. All right, listen up, the rest of you! I know you're tired, I know that what…what we saw is horrific, and disheartening. Just remember, we _were_ able to save lives, and now we _are_ going to stop the Collectors from taking anyone else. No one thought we could make it this far, but look at what we've done! I'm proud of each and every one of you. Dig in, stay strong. Let's get this finished and go home."

* * *

><p>Though she had recovered somewhat, Liara was…as the rest of them…exhausted. She felt decades had passed since they were on the Broker ship, simply enjoying life. Now, they were in a hell that seemed never-ending.<p>

As the platform lifted off, she could not help a glance back at those gathered by the doors, already finding cover and preparing to dig in and defend at all costs. Garrus she had known the longest, of course, but all had become friends to some degree, and she wondered if she would live to see them again.

Turning to look at Shepard, she was not surprised to see Del had not looked back herself. Necessity or not, the woman had to feel like she was abandoning them.

Stepping over, she reached out and took Shepard's gloved hand, threading her fingers tightly into those of her love. When Del looked at her, Liara said nothing, but the expression in her eyes said it all.

Live, or die, they were going to do so together…and Liara would have no regrets.

Looking away from Del she let her eyes scan upward, following the strange tubes and pipes. Though no asari had been taken thus-far, one did not have to be human to feel the horror at what they had witnessed. She knew it was tearing Shepard apart, that she was imagining poor Nan…and then, what had happened with Sydney-

_Sydney. Goddess, how did she become indoctrinated? Had she not managed to fight it, had she squeezed that trigger one more time…or planted her first shot a bit further north-_

Liara squeezed Shepard's hand a bit more tightly, before she forced herself to release it. No. It would be too easy to get caught up in fears, both of what had happened and what could still happen. She had to keep her focus, they _all_ did, if they were to get back home again alive.

_Minds on recreation_, she thought with weary amusement, recalling one of her many idiom faux pas she had so naively repeated. 'Keep your head in the game' was the proper saying, but like a fool Liara had bungled it the first time. Though, the adoring, amused smile Shepard had given her at the time had more than been worth the embarrassment.

Weariness drew her head downward a little, and she closed her eyes briefly. Goddess, it would be so simple to just fall asleep for a moment or two, right here on her feet. She couldn't recall being so-

"_Oh my God!"_

Liara's eyes snapped open at Miranda's words, the Australian's gasp holding more shock and horror than Liara had ever heard from an organic, of any race. She heard Del's simultaneous intake of breath in the same instance.

They had just passed into the central chamber. The asari's wide, sky-blue eyes filled first with confusion, then disbelief, and then the same horror her two companions had felt. Her lips fell apart and she felt her air had been stolen momentarily from her lungs. When it finally did return, she could only breathe a single syllable, the sound an almost non-existent groan, a portrayal of emotion that words would never be able to describe.

"_Oh…"_

The room was enormous, the far walls almost foggy with distance. The cavernous roof was lousy with those tubes and pipes. They snaked their way along the ceiling in thick tangles before draping their way downward. Caught in their grip like a marionette in a nest of strings…was a grotesque, half-formed Reaper.

"EDI…" Shepard's voice sounded low, half-choked.

"_Shepard, I think I have finally deduced what the alien signature is,"_ EDI offered.

"No need, EDI," Shepard whispered. "We're looking at it right now. It's… it's a fucking _Reaper._ A fucking _human_ Reaper."

"This…this is an abomination," Miranda said, as if the other two were unaware of that fact. "This is what they did with all our colonists? They're using our genetic material to make…to make another one of _them?_"

"_The Reapers are not pure synthetics. They are a mix of synthetic and biological components,"_ EDI stated. _"Perhaps the harvesting is a means to perpetuate, the Reaper's version of reproduction. It is clear however that this Reaper is in the early stages of development. Hundreds of thousands of humans have been processed so far…significantly more will be necessary to complete it."_

"Well, they're not going to get a _chance_ to complete it," Shepard growled. "We're going to fuck up the nursery. EDI, we're docking at the central platform in less than thirty seconds. We'll set the detonation as soon as we can access the core."

"_Understood, Shepard. The _Normandy _is moving to the new landing zone now. I am transferring you the most efficient path of escape once the explosives are set. It should take less than two minutes for you to reach our location from yours, so long as you move at your maximum velocity."_

"Believe me, we'll be busting ass. All right, docking now. Stand by."

* * *

><p>The platform slid into its base at the huge control station at the center of the room. The abomination hung above them, a tattered and tortured golem that nevertheless seemed to pulse with waves of life. Shepard could feel them crawling along her arms, raising the fine hair, singing through her head like a note played just outside the realm of hearing. Given Miranda's nauseous look, she felt it too. Liara simply looked pale.<p>

"Let's get this charge set," Shepard said grimly, already heading for the consoles. Her limp was a bit more pronounced, proof that the suit pain-killers were starting to wear off.

_Ten minutes on the detonator, but only two needed to get us from here to there. Even with a bum leg, even if we end up having to shoot the whole way, I can still make it in under time. Even if I can't, that's not the point. This fucking thing is going down if I have to go down with it._

As she neared the console, however, the unexpected happened. Blue light suddenly flashed from above, a nails-on-chalkboard groan sang out and ripped like a saw down her spine as the mammoth head dangling above suddenly lifted.

The Reaper had woken.

* * *

><p>Glass shattered, raining shards of debris the size of living room windows down on the trio. Shepard leapt frantically to one side, narrowly missing a jagged chunk large enough and moving fast enough to cut her in half. It erupted against the floor with the boom of an artillery strike.<p>

Rolling, she saw that Miranda had caught several pieces with her weakened biotics, her face streaming with sweat as she sent them flying back at the creature. One wedge landed in one of the Reaper's luminescent eyes and it broke as well, weeping glowing ice and misery down its metal face.

Listing at a drastic angle now, the beast swiped a huge hand toward the platform. Miranda barely dropped flat in time to avoid it, but Liara…staggering to her feet, was hit a glancing blow across the shoulders. Glancing…but hard enough to send her feet from the ground and leaving her to careen toward the edge of the island.

Shepard felt the muscle in her leg tear as she made a frantic dive for the sliding asari. The Reaper's groping hand slammed down into the platform, breaking it free and tilting it drastically. Liara's slide increased as did Shepard's, both tumbling toward an edge that was only slowly righting itself.

Her eyes met wide, frightened blue ones a breath before her hand closed on Liara's…and Liara sailed over the edge. The chin of Shepard's helmet cracked into the metal floor hard enough to make her see stars, as the flailing Reaper hit the platform again, tilting it the other way, sending their edge now sailing upward. Still holding Liara's hand the asari was suddenly flung above her. Shepard twisted in an effort to hurl her to safety and then they were tumbling again, careening the other direction.

Where Miranda was, Del had no idea.

She skidded back up onto the main island as the platform once more tipped the other direction, breaking away to spin into the Reaper itself. Shepard's back and hips crashed into the side of the console bank, and for a moment she could only lay, struggling to breathe. A half-second pause was all she allowed herself and, pain aching through her, she managed to force herself to her feet.

"Li…"

The dazed asari, battered and woozy, was struggling up nearby as well. Hearing a horrific wail Shepard whipped around, rifle aimed, only to see the final arm of the Reaper go tumbling into the abyss. The rogue platform it had torn free had, in turn, ripped loose its remaining supports when it collided with it.

Gasping, heaving, not sure if her lungs would ever suit her again, Shepard looked quickly for her missing comrade.

"_Miranda!"_

"Here…" came a pained voice, heavy coughs. The Australian pushed herself up from under some debris, staggering to her feet. The waist of her hard-suit was torn, flashes of crimson showing she'd been wounded.

"How bad?" Shepard demanded.

"Just a scratch, nothing to worry about," she panted, gritting her teeth. "Let's get that detonator set and get out of here while we have the chance."

Shepard gripped Liara's arm momentarily, her entire body aching miserably as she limped toward the console. "Send the signal," she told her. "Get the others back to the _Normandy."_

As Liara activated her omni-tool to send the retreat to Garrus, Shepard reached the console and began to access it. The detonator…two timed grenades…would have to be implanted directly into the mechanism to insure the explosion reached the core.

As she began to set the first grenade timer, ignoring the way her head was spinning, a faint chime sounded. Miranda's startled voice spoke up a moment later. "Shepard…the Illusive Man is contacting us."

_Fucker must have been tuning in to the ship's monitoring systems. EDI would have picked up on the retreat signal given to Garrus's team, and he would have picked up on it at almost the same moment._

Miranda activated the call and the image of the Illusive Man appeared, projected directly in front of her.

"Good work, Shepard," he said. "I knew that you could do it."

_Good lord, is it possible for a man to sound any more goddamned pleased with himself?_

"Not done yet. I'm setting the charges to blow this fucking place now," she growled. Finishing the timer on the first grenade, she set it aside and began on the second, not even bothering to look at the bastard.

"That won't be necessary."

Every muscle in Shepard's body seemed to cord at once, turning into stone. Her motions halted and her glare…slow, dangerous, almost manic…fixed to him.

"Not _necessary_?" she asked with dangerous calm.

"The Collectors are defeated. The station is ours now. We can take over, use its technology against the Reapers, further the cause of humanity."

"You cannot be serious-" Liara gaped as Shepard rose to her feet, bracing herself momentarily on the console as her leg threatened to buckle.

"I know you've been monitoring our comms since we got here," Shepard snarled. "You _know _what happened here! Hundreds of thousands of humans were _murdered_ here for an abomination of a nightmare, and you want to _**save it**__?"_

"Think of what we could learn! If you destroy the station, their sacrifices would have been in _vain_. Think of how far mankind advanced with what traces of Prothean technology we found. Think of how far we _could_ go with the treasure trove this station offers us-"

"No," Shepard replied sternly. "_No._ Too many died here, and I will die _myself _before I see this place anywhere _near __**your**_ filthy hands."

"Shepard, you must reconsider-"

Turning her back on the holograph, she weakly got back down to one knee, continuing to work on the second grenade. With a glare, the Illusive Man turned.

"Miranda, don't let Shepard blow this station! It is far too valuable. Stop her!"

"_Stop_ her?" Miranda blinked. "Shepard was right…about you, about what you've done and what you're _willing_ to do. I can't…I can't be a part of this anymore. What the Collectors did to those people, nearly did to my _friends_…no. No, this place _needs_ to be destroyed."

"Miranda!"

"Consider this my resignation," the Australian told him. As she reached for her tool to cut off communication, the image suddenly whirled.

"Shepard, Nan is alive."

The words stopped all three women cold. Del felt her heart stop, then resume with a low drum that sounded miles away. She looked at him, and his frantic expression cooled a bit.

"She's alive," he repeated calmly. "She wasn't taken at Freedom's Progress. I…_arranged…_for safe transport and housing for her. She is perfectly comfortable and safe."

Pointing at the console with his cigarette, his synthetic eyes went to ice.

"If you blow this station, Shepard…I will have no choice but to _eliminate_ Nancy Salgado."


	68. Chapter 68

A/N: Due to very fervent demand, all Chinese will now have a linked translation at the end of the chapter.

* * *

><p>"You <em>bastard<em>!"

Shepard had rarely heard Liara truly angry, but somehow the gentle asari had managed to put so much raw fury into those two simple words that the very ground beneath them seemed to tremble with it. Had his image not been holographic, she might have thrown a punch…or put a bullet in his brain.

"Dr. T'Soni-"

"You took that sweet, gentle woman and held her prisoner for…for _insurance_?" Liara accused, tears standing in her eyes though her expression was that of wrath embodied. "You let Shepard believe she was being tortured, that she was…was _liquefied_-"

Shepard half turned, draping an arm over Liara's chest and holding her shoulder. Miranda, though still reeling from the news herself, could not help but note the odd change in dynamic. For once, Liara was the one losing her grip on her temper, and Del was the one restraining her.

However it was clear, Shepard's legendary temper was not even remotely idle. "Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài!" she snarled venomously, turning her head to glare at the man even as she held the asari back.

"Shepard, all the insults in the galaxy won't change what is. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, that you would come to see the truth of things," he told her. "My intention was never to harm Mrs. Salgado. In fact, I am the only reason she is alive, just as I am the reason _you_ are alive. Had I left her on the colony, she would have suffered the same as the rest of them. You are as aware as anyone that sometimes, a hard line needs to be taken. All I ask is for you to leave this station intact…and she will be waiting for you with arms wide open the next time you dock at the Citadel."

"You taking Nan shows you _knew_ that colony was about to be hit!" Shepard spat. "You didn't _warn_ the rest of the people there? Just took her as bait to dangle in front of me the moment I became too much of a problem, and left the others to die in such a _horrific_…?"

"I do what is _necessary_ for the greater good. As I said, I had hoped it wouldn't come to this but this was too important to leave to chance and your impetuous temper-"

"Oh, I'll _show_ you my temper-"

"It is best for both of us if you simply walk away," he said sternly. "Just turn around right now, and go back to the _Normandy_. Mission accomplished, crew safe, Nancy safe, and you will have done the impossible once again…it's your choice, Shepard."

Most of Del's expression was invisible behind her face-plate but her eyes were clear, as was the doom and fire flashing within them. Those eyes held promises of retributions even Satan Himself would never have contemplated.

Without a word, she turned back toward the console, crouching painfully and picking up the two grenades. Timers were both set, they just needed to be placed and started. Each of the small devices felt like thousand pound weights.

"Shepard…?" The Illusive Man said warily, even as Shepard glanced up at the open console access. Unseen to anyone, her lower lip trembled, her dark eyes swimming a moment.

_I am so sorry, Nan…_

"You do this, Shepard, and I promise you, you will _never _see Salgado again," he threatened, his voice hardening even more. Shepard clenched her jaw until she could feel her teeth creak. "And I won't just kill her. I promise her _no end_ of pain-"

His voice cut off as Miranda deactivated the feed. "Bloody bastard…"

Shepard almost mechanically set the first grenade in its spot. She vaguely felt a hand touch the shoulder of her hard-suit as she regarded the second grenade. Liara knelt beside her, her touch travelling to Del's wrist instead. Shepard looked at her, unsurprised to see the tears on the asari's cheeks behind her face-plate.

Tears…but also, firm resolve. Liara said nothing, only nodded once.

Shepard placed the second grenade.

* * *

><p>"EDI, this is Miranda. We've just set the charges and are heading back to the <em>Normandy<em> now."

"_Acknowledged. We have implemented sufficient repairs to return through the relay. The rest of the crew has just arrived,"_ EDI responded.

"Injuries?" Shepard demanded, loud enough the AI heard it over Miranda's comm.

"_Several, but no casualties,"_ EDI told her. _"Kasumi was the most seriously wounded. Chakwas is tending to their needs now."_

"We should be there in just under six minutes. Lawson out."

Shepard's leg was blank agony, barely wanting to move, let alone support her. Seeing her struggle and knowing it wasn't all due to her wound, Liara stepped to her side and lifted her arm, draping it around her shoulders to help her.

Shepard glanced toward her in mute thanks, when motion behind her caught her eye.

"_DOWN!"_ she barked, throwing herself toward the ground and using her grip on Liara to haul the asari with her. They both hit the floor hard, air barking from their lungs at the impact. Above them, an enormous hand swiped through the air. Surging up, Shepard hauled Liara to her feet, then shoved her toward Miranda.

"_Run!"_

The Reaper abomination had, apparently, not been destroyed in its fall and had managed to claw its way back up the chasm wall. Badly damaged, the thing was flailing at them like a wounded animal striking out in sheer mindless instinct. Shepard turned, whipping out her rifle and falling to her knee as her leg buckled beneath her. Letting out a spray of shot she stitched a pattern across its broken eyes and gaping mouth, ignoring the wrenching tear of her wound as she forced herself up again.

The abomination recoiled a bit, and Shepard limped frantically toward Miranda and Liara, who had made it to one of the final platforms. Liara opened fire over Shepard's shoulder, trying to drive the thing back again as Lawson attempted to access the control console.

Shepard dove forward onto the platform, tumbling in a roll. A huge arm crashed down. The platform broke free.

She thought she heard someone scream.

Then the world seemed to slam into her, and everything went to black.

* * *

><p>A numb ,soupy haze broke apart around her. Feeling weight, a wait that pressed her air into a thin, heated tube, she instinctively shifted, pushing it off. Her pulse sounded red in her ears and behind her eyes as she tried to orient. Her helmet HUD was flashing madly, displaying various damage to her hard-suit. Turning into, a sit her head momentarily dipped forward like a marionette with its strings cut.<p>

The platform they had made it to had crashed into the wall, wedging in the opening of a tunnel. Debris was scattered everywhere. Gripping a nearby beam that had been torn free of the structure in the collision, she hauled herself to her feet.

"Li..." she coughed, looking around. "Miranda?"

She saw a form in the dust and stumbled over, nearly collapsing beside them. Miranda coughed, then gasped, hand plastering over her wounded side as she went to sit. Shepard grabbed hold of her.

"How bad?"

"Added a few broken ribs I think," she said. "Nasty knock to the head."

Still looking around, Shepard helped the woman to sit, then forced herself back up to her feet. "Li? _Li!_ Report!"

"Shep…Shepard…"

"Li!"

Catching sight of motion she shoved some debris frantically out of her way. Liara was half-buried in it, her hard-suit clearly damaged, the pain in her tense breath more than evident.

"Liara…"

"I will be…all right," the asari assured. "I believe my arm and wrist are broken and…and perhaps my collar bone. I-"

"Shepard! We only have five minutes to make it to _Normandy_!" Miranda suddenly called out, stark alarm plain in her voice, the reflection of her omni-tool painted over her helmet.

Hauling Liara up Shepard demanded, "Have we got a path from here?"

"Yes…it will take just over three minutes-"

"Then _run_! Let's go!"

"Shepard-"

"_MOVE IT!"_

She urged Liara ahead of her again, pursuing the two women deeper into the tunnel. Ignoring the roaring pain in her leg she forced every ounce of speed she could out of her body, unshipping her rifle. Miranda and Liara, both moving faster, soon opened fire as some drones closed in. Not daring to stop, the women only mowed a path or knocked them back enough to get by, and continued on, Shepard covering their flank.

"There! There it is!" Miranda pointed down the last length of hallway. The _Normandy_ hovered just past an open airlock. A field shimmered over it, keeping what atmosphere the station had intact, but Shepard knew as soon as she passed through it every hole in their armor would be open to vacuum. It would not be pleasant.

Survivable, but not pleasant.

"Go!" Shepard barked when she saw Liara seem to hesitate. "I'm right behind you!"

She turned to take down a few drones that had appeared, gunfire snapping and hissing past her like a stream of hornets. Spraying shot over them enough to make them duck for cover, she turned to make the final dash.

Miranda was in the airlock. She saw Liara hit the edge of the field and halt, once more turning back. Grunt, as well lurking in the lock, leaned out dangerously far, reaching right through the field and grabbing the asari. She let out a surprised cry of protest before he all but threw her inside, then held out his hand toward Shepard.

The last of her reserves were fading. She was drawing out every scrap of energy she had, all but dragging her leg behind her. From somewhere above _Normandy,_ gunfire began, aimed toward the airlock…drones, perhaps, clustered at another exit. Sparks flashed off the shielding.

"We're under fire!" Miranda cried, and seeking to protect those exposed in the lock, Joker pulled _Normandy _further away from the edge, opening a sizable gap between station and ship.

Shepard had no time to pause. She dropped her rifle even as more snaps passed her, bullets cutting through air and making the shimmering haze of energy ripple like waves in a pond. Passing through it she felt the immediate burn in her wound, cramping, twisting, rising to insane heights. Her good foot planted on the edge of eternity. Taking hold of every last ounce of energy and determination left to her, Shepard didn't hesitate, pouring all of it into a final, desperate leap.

**SHEPARD. WE WILL HAVE YOU.**

Life focused, tightening like a string, stretching out until the space from one heartbeat to the next was an ice age to itself. She could see Grunt's face, Miranda's…Liara's. She could feel her body stretching toward them, her hand out in front of her, her arm a mile in length. She could see the faint sparks against the bulkhead, like tiny flowers blooming and then fading, each flash as defined and perfect as any classic painting.

**SHEPARD. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE US.**

Too short. Too short…

She crashed into the edge of the airlock, hand desperately scrabbling for a hold, her body dangling free. Something snapped against the back of her armor, whining away. Then another, this one bringing heat, biting fire, forcing the air from her lungs even as it shoved the gritted cry of pain through her lips.

**IOVINO.**

She was being hauled upward and inward, light dying as the airlock door closed. Miranda's voice was shouting from a thousand miles away. Joker's reply was a nonsensical moan of syllables. Her helmet was torn away. Someone was gasping thick, wet, burbling.

**IOVINO.**

_Get Dr. Chakwas,_ she tried to say. _Someone's hurt._

The words would not come, lost in a pair of blue eyes, a hand on her cheek…and then a final echo escorting her down into the black.

**IOVINO.**

* * *

><p>"Shepard?"<p>

Fingers passed over her eyes, there and darting away like fish again. Pain swallowed her into its arms. Her voice was ragged in her throat. Then cool, the fog of medication.

Then sleep.

"Shepard?"

Her lips moved faintly, weakly, thoughts drifting beyond capture. _"Kasumi…ok? Miranda…"_

"Sleep, Commander. Stop being so stubborn."

"_Liara…"_

Fog. Exhaustion. Drugs. Sleep.

* * *

><p>Shepard's dark brown eyes shifted and focused on the back standing nearby. Lab coat, short gray hair…licking her dry lips she murmured. "Helen?"<p>

A familiar face turning, then the doctor was by her side, a smile on her lips. "Well, good morning…_again._ You are a stubborn woman, Commander…even pumped with enough drugs to keep a krogan down."

"Wh-what?"

"You kept waking up…once during surgery, twice thereafter. It seems your tolerance for sedation is only increasing, as is your sheer petulant will. Didn't think that last part was possible."

Shepard was too weary to give the woman the withering look she deserved. "Report," she mumbled again, pressing her eyes shut tight, then blinking rapidly in an attempt to focus better.

"We're back in home space," Chakwas told her, sitting by the bedside. Her cool hand as it landed on Del's was comforting, soothing. "The Collector station is gone. We barely got the _Normandy_ to safe distance in time."

"Crew…"

"Physically, everyone had at least one hole to patch. Kasumi was the worst off…took a shot to her hip. If it hadn't been for Legion she would have died. From what Thane tells me, it shielded her with its own body and carried her the rest of the way at speed. If it hadn't, she would have bled to death long before she reached me."

"She ok?"

"She's just fine. Going to be a bit recovering but she'll get full use of the hip back. She's resting only two beds away. There were a few broken bones, bruises, and scrapes distributed liberally among the others. You came off with the worst of it…as usual."

"Liara?"

"She's all right," Chakwas reassured. "Desperately worried about you. We couldn't allow her in here with both you and Kasumi in surgery. She's been parked out in the mess for two days now…refuses to move."

"I was out for two days?"

"That's what happens when you take three bullets, Shepard. The shot to your leg was bad enough. It struck your reinforced femur and shattered…sent shards as far up as your hip and some lodged in your knee. You also took a shot to the back that punctured your lung."

Shepard focused upward, looking away from the doctor and toward the warm lights overhead. "I only remember being hit twice…you said three?"

"Yes. I'm not surprised you didn't feel the last one. It was in the same leg that had already been wounded so with that pain and a strong dose of adrenaline, it would all have blended together. Well, no, that's sort of a lie. It…wasn't _technically_ in your leg."

Shepard's brows knit as she looked at her friend again. Chakwas looked amused, and said nothing. Shepard's confusion turned to a scowl.

"No…"

"Yes."

"You mean right in the…"

"Yes."

She groaned. "You _do_ realize I'm never gonna live this down."

"Be glad that you _live_," Helen said gently. "I have some water for you, and then I want you to sleep some more. When you wake up, if you're feeling up to it, I'll let Liara in for a bit."

Shepard nodded, knowing better than to argue…though right now the _only _thing she wanted to see was Liara.

See her, hold her and know that she was all right. That they were _both_ all right.

* * *

><p>When Shepard opened her eyes again, however, it wasn't Liara standing there. Nodding a little, she shifted on the bio-bed with a wince. "Hello, Miranda."<p>

"Shepard, you shouldn't be moving, not for at least another day," the woman warned.

"Ehn. This isn't anything I can't handle," Shepard gave her a tired, pained little smirk. "What brings you down?"

"We're on our way to the Folly. Should be there in about six more hours," Miranda told her. "The _Normandy_ needs some extensive repairs. Wilcher contacted us from the Broker ship shortly after we returned from the Omega Four Relay. They were able to trace the computer tampering…as you already knew, it was Sydney."

"How is she?" Del asked quietly.

"Devastated," Miranda admitted. "She claims she has no memory of the tampering and does not recall when or where she could have become indoctrinated. I questioned her-…"

At the look on Shepard's face, Miranda inclined her head a little. "I just questioned her, Shepard. It wasn't an interrogation. I promise I was gentle."

"What did she say?"

"She seemed very forthcoming, eager to outline everything she remembered. Her story has gaps, however…nearest we can tell, whatever occurred to cause indoctrination happened when she was pursuing Thane. She is unable to account for a three month gap in her absence. She seems as troubled by it as anyone. She has no conscious memory of tampering with the Broker's defenses, but she does recall the confrontation with you on the Collector's base. She…as I said, she is devastated."

Shepard's eyes glazed as she looked at a point past the other woman, nodding wearily. "Yeah…"

After a long silence, Miranda ducked her head a bit, clearing her throat. "Shepard…about…about Nan-"

"Don't apologize," Shepard said sternly.

"Don't apologize?" Miranda asked. "After what he did-"

"Did you know?" Del's eyes shifted to fix on her face.

"No! Of _course_ I didn't-"

"Then _don't _apologize," Shepard said. She was weak, and drugged, but her voice was no less firm because of it. "You've done more than _enough_ apologizing for that man. I won't hear it."

Reaching out, Miranda hesitated a moment, then lay her hand momentarily over Shepard's. "Thank you," she said softly, then cleared her throat again. "I'll let Liara in. I know you want to see her and she's been all but clawing at the door herself."

Shepard turned her hand over, giving Miranda's a light squeeze before she nodded. "Yeah, that'd be nice."

Miranda stepped back, disappearing from view. Shepard heard the door open and soft voices for a moment, before footsteps moved over to her side.

"_Del…"_

"Hey, you," she smiled, reaching over toward the asari as Liara got to her side. Instantly her hand was clasped between her love's, shimmering damp appearing beneath sky blue eyes. "Hey…hey, none of that. I'm all right."

"You…you are a crazy, stubborn, _impossible_ fool, Del Shepard," Liara gasped.

"You forgot gorgeous, fabulous, devastatingly charmi-" She broke off with a muffled sound of surprise as Liara cupped her face and kissed her. The asari drew back only a few inches, thumbs stroking lightly over tan skin.

"There," Liara smiled, her voice barely a whisper. "That is _one_ way to shut you up."

Shepard grinned. Lifting her arms weakly, she hugged Liara as tight as she was able, the other woman lowering her head to her shoulder. "Goddess…_Del…_"

Struggling against the heat that wanted to rise in her own eyes, Shepard only held her love close. "I'm here…Tianlán. I'm here…"

* * *

><p>Wilcher had returned to the Folly, and was there to greet the <em>Normandy<em> as she limped into dry-dock. Her sides were ragged, the new plating scarred and beaten and in some places gone altogether, revealing the shimmer of kinetic barriers.

The big man looked grimly stoic as Miranda, Garrus, and Tali moved down the ramp. The young quarian had suffered a mild infection and a raging fever from her wound on the station, and was still a bit weak. The turian and human woman themselves looked a bit ragged around the edges still.

"How is she?" He asked without preamble as they reached his side, work crews already moving in.

"Quiet. She insists we keep her locked up, but we can only hold her in that small brig for so long. It was made for transport, not permanent residence. Dr. Solus has some colleagues he thinks might be of some help. They started working on research into indoctrination after the attack at the Citadel. They're on Sur'Kesh. She has expressed an interest in going there, and they have a small facility in which they can keep her comfortable as well as secure."

"They believe in the Reapers then?" Wilcher asked, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"It seems not everyone was so easily taken in by the supposed 'geth conspiracy'," Miranda agreed. "It's not Cerberus and it's not the Alliance. It's her best hope of finding some answers without being dissected. Deeds, I suspect, will insist on going with her, and Liara has agreed to look into the forgotten three months and see if she can't at least track Rasler's movements during that period. Maybe find out where she could have gone or what she could have come into contact with that would cause this."

Wilcher nodded, blowing out a breath. "Poor Syd. I can't imagine…how's Shepard doing?"

"She's still down, but she'll make a full recovery," Garrus told him. "Give her another day and she'll be spitting like a hellcat that Chakwas won't let her get up. I figure by the time the repairs to the _Normandy _are complete, she'll be more or less herself again."

"I have a full manifest of the damages," Tali supplied, passing him a data pad. "It's going to take at least a week to get her back into fighting form. I hope you don't mind us as guests that long."

"Course not," he said, giving the quarian an affable smile. "She'll be running better than ever by the time we're done with her."

"At least it will give us enough time to figure out our next step," Miranda murmured, looking back toward the ship. Her dark brows knitted, a strange expression crossing her face.

"Something wrong?" Wilcher asked. The Australian straightened.

"While you're at it…give her a new coat of paint," she murmured. "The old one doesn't suit her anymore."

* * *

><p>Moving gingerly, Shepard limped down the ramp of the <em>Normandy<em> to the work floor, Liara close at her side. The human woman was reluctantly using a cane Dr. Chakwas had provided until the soft tissue had finished mending enough to not risk re-injury.

"_You'll use it or I'll beat you with it,"_ had been Helen's exact words.

They had been in dry dock two days now and the repairs were well underway. Feeling Liara's hand slip into hers as they made level ground, Shepard smiled tiredly at her and gave her fingers a squeeze.

"Same rooms as before," Liara prodded gently. Her urge was to help a bit more, take some of Shepard's weight or insist on longer pauses as they went, but she knew that Del's pride would only be wounded at that. As it was, the human woman's mood was already dark enough. She wore tension like a blanket…a familiar suit of armor designed to hide the horrible helplessness deep inside.

Moving slowly, they entered deeper into the base. By the time they reached the door to the guest quarters, the corners of Del's eyes and mouth had gone tight, the only show of pain she would allow.

Liara gently urged her toward the low sofa and Shepard carefully sat, letting out a breath of relief as she settled. The door shut, the pair of them alone, the human woman let her head fall forward, setting her cane aside before her fingers threaded through her hair.

Liara bustled about the small kitchenette, making some tea before carrying the warm mugs to the low coffee table. Setting one aside she softly touched the other to Del's forearm. Shepard looked at her with reddened eyes, then absently took it, holding it cradled in her hands as she peered into its amber depths.

"Do you think we can find her before he can hurt her?" she asked after a long moment. Liara didn't need to ask to know who she was referring to.

"We can try," Liara told her softly. "I have already asked Feron to start looking into it. Cerberus security is not easy to access but it is not impossible. If a record exists of where he's holding her, we can find it."

She didn't add that she held out little hope. The Illusive Man did not make idle threats. If he was even telling the truth about having Nancy in the first place, it would only take him a single phone call to end the woman's life. He had probably made that phone call before they'd even managed to escape the Collector ship. The chances the woman remained alive now were…remote, at best.

Still, she did not vocalize this. Del was not a stupid woman, no matter how she might insist she was on occasion. She knew all this already…but vague hope was all she had to cling to right now.

Shepard's head sagged, and she lifted one hand and covered her face. Reaching out, Liara took the tea and set it aside, before she took the human into her arms. Shepard clung tightly to her, face buried in the asari's neck as she struggled against tears that would not be denied.

It was a vulnerability Del never showed to anyone but her. It was part of the bond they shared that others might recognize…but would never fully understand. Though they were not melding, being this close to her love, she could feel a hollow echo of Shepard's pain aching through her own chest. She fought her own tears and grief as they threatened to overwhelm her. Nan had been her friend too, a calming port in an impossible storm, when Shepard had been taken from her.

Right now, however, giving in to her own feelings would only be selfish. Del needed her, and she had to be the strong one for once.

"I killed her, Liara," Shepard murmured wearily against her neck after several long minutes…after the tears had given way to exhaustion.

"No…this was not your doing."

"He gave me a choice. I could have chosen to save her. Instead I blew that place _knowing_ that he would-"

"It was the _right_ thing to do," Liara insisted. "The technology there would have gone to help no one but himself. He would have raped the memory of every man, woman and child that had perished there. He would not have used it to advance the cause of your people, only to advance the cause of _Cerberus_…and from what I have seen, that cause is neither a kind nor a productive one. It is merely destructive, born on the pain of others and squeezed of every _true_ ounce of humanity."

Shepard loosened her hold a little on the other woman, sitting back a bit. Her eyes were red from her tears, the brooding, exhausted look on her face instantly reminding the asari of the young Del…the child she had seen in their shared visions. Sweeping her hands over Shepard's damp cheeks she leaned in and kissed her softly, a mere reaffirmation of her affection, before they rested their foreheads together, each woman with her hands clasped behind the other's neck, as if in an odd form of prayer.

After a long moment, Shepard spoke again.

"Mordin knows some scientists that he think might be able to help Sydney. They have been doing some preliminary research on indoctrination. They have a small base on Sur'Kesh."

"Yes, he mentioned something of this to me. I know how horrified, how stricken she is that she harmed you."

"It wasn't her fault," Shepard said, drawing back enough to meet her eyes. "I don't blame her."

"I know you do not," Liara told her. "Neither do I. It is such a…a horrible thing. I cannot imagine the conflict, of being swayed by another's will, of losing yourself so completely…"

When her eyes cast down, Shepard lightly traced her jaw. "You're thinking of your mother," she noted. Liara nodded.

"Sydney is not quite to that point," she admitted. "Her indoctrination was clearly not complete or not so far advanced. Had it been, she would not have been able to resist. Her very first shot would have been…"

She broke off, unable to finish the sentence. It didn't need to be said aloud, anyway. Shepard was as aware as any of them that it was only Sydney's desperation not to kill her friend that had prevented that first shot from landing in her skull to begin with.

"I haven't gone to see her yet," Del mumbled. "I should…I should go to see her. Mordin wants to arrange secure transport to Sur'Kesh from the Citadel. I should talk to her, before she goes."

Liara nodded silently. There would be more than one good-bye when the _Normandy_ was finally repaired. The mission was done with. The specialists would go their own way. Garrus would return to Palaven, Tali to the Flotilla. Mordin would be accompanying Sydney and Deirdre to his home world and turn his focuses then on helping Eír overcome her conditioning. Thane, Kasumi, and Jack would doubtlessly vanish into the crowd. Samara would go back to asari space, Legion would return to the Veil…in just a few days, they would all be light years apart once again.

"Do you know what Miranda will do?" she asked. Del shook her head.

"She intends to disappear for a while," she said. "The Illusive Man won't be very happy with her, and she needs to drop off the radar."

"He does not take rejection well," Liara agreed. She, herself, would have her hands full.

She felt her heart waver, her stomach sink as the reality that she and Del would be parted once again fell upon her. There was no helping it. With Shepard's destruction of the station, the Illusive Man would not just be taking steps to harm Nan. The mission was over. Neither held any illusions that one of his very first actions would be to seize the Broker ship and its bounty of information contacts…and if he could, he would harm Liara were he able to get hold of her.

The _Normandy_ itself would also be a target. EDI had informed them that almost immediately upon their return to home space, Cerberus had attempted to remotely re-implement her shackles and take control of the ship. She was able to thwart them but they would not be easily dissuaded. The only way to protect the ship and EDI was to put the _Normandy_ into hands even more powerful than the Illusive Man's.

When the repairs were complete, Liara would be returning to Hagalaz with a large compliment of Thanatos - now under Wilcher's command with Syd out of commission – to salvage everything they could and destroy the ship before Cerberus arrived. The _Normandy _would proceed directly to the Citadel to offload those who wished to leave. Shepard would remain and surrender both herself and the ship to the Alliance via Councilor Anderson. Though her Spectre status did protect her if she desired, her honor demanded she do no less than submit herself to Alliance justice. In her heart, Shepard was and always would be a marine, a soldier, her very guts colored the blue and gold of the fighting force she had sworn her oath too.

She would be arrested, even if just as a formality. She would be shipped to Earth, face uncountable debriefings and interrogations with the Alliance Brass, endure the examinations, the questions, the scrutiny she had feared would tie her up and prevent her pursuit of the Collectors. With that threat now gone, she had no excuses…and wanted none.

With herself and the _Normandy _in Alliance hands, the Illusive Man would have to gnash his teeth impotently and chalk up his losses for the time being.

In the end, however, it would mean they would be apart once more…and the Goddess only knew for how long.

_Will this never be over?_ she wondered. _Will we never have peace?_

Drawing Liara back into her arms, Shepard murmured softly, "I love you, Tianlán."

"I love you too, Shepard," Liara whispered back without hesitation. "I love you too."

* * *

><p>Chinese translation: cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài = fuck your ancestors to the eighteenth generation<p> 


	69. Chapter 69

A/N: Minor mention of shmexy.

* * *

><p>The brig on the <em>Normandy<em> was a small room about half the size of the Nest. Half of it was separated from the rest with a barrier curtain, forming the one and only cell. Sporting a cot, a toilet, and a sink, it was far from luxurious appointments.

Miranda had a second cot brought in to the free half of the room for Deirdre, the asari insisting firmly upon remaining.

When the door opened and Shepard limped in, still leaning on her cane, the pair were standing on either side of the curtain, only a few inches and that shimmering veil of light separating them as they murmured softly to one another.

At the sound of the door, they both looked over. Deirdre gave Shepard a slight nod before stepping back. "I will leave you two alone for a moment," she said softly, giving Sydney a final, concerned look before she departed.

As Shepard walked gingerly forward, Sydney drifted back, sitting down on the cot. She looked tired, wound tight as a bow string. Her amber eyes were sunk in faint hollows and her brows seemed permanently knit.

Del paused at the edge of the curtain, resisting the urge to ask the blonde how she was. She already knew the answer to that question.

It was Sydney who spoke first.

"Solus doesn't think it's too far advanced," she said, staring at her hands where they draped over her knees. "He can't be sure, of course, but he thinks I'm still in the very early stages."

"That's something, at least," Del replied softly.

"Yeah. Something."

"Miranda tells me you remember nothing of how this happened?"

"Not a goddamn thing, and that's the truth," Sydney told her, looking up for the first time. "I've been wracking my brain ever since it happened, Shep. I can't sleep. My head hurts from going over it over and over again and there's just…there's just nothing _there_. Three months gone…how could someone lose _three months_ of their life and just _not notice_?"

"We'll find out, Syd," Shepard promised. "I have every faith in Dr. Solus and his colleagues. They'll figure this out-"

"Yeah…maybe. You and I both know how little is understood about indoctrination, and we both know that all evidence shows it is irreversible. Even away from a direct influence I'll only get worse and worse. And if these salarians _do_ find a way to help me, to cure me…how can I ever trust myself again, Del? How can anyone _else_ ever trust me again?"

"Hey, _I_ trust you," Del said sternly. "What that thing tried to make you do was _not_ your fault, do you hear me?"

"_I could have killed you_!" Sydney said hotly, rising to her feet. "Whatever force would have made me pull that trigger, it would _still_ remain that it was _my_ hand that did it. That I'd have to look at myself and know that-…"

She broke off furiously, turning her back to her friend and threading her fingers into her blonde hair with a frustrated moan. "Maybe it would have been better if you had just shot me. Taken me out."

"Sydney-"

"It would have been the _right_ call to make."

"I _don't_ believe that," Shepard replied tersely. "I refuse to believe that you can't be helped, Sydney, and I could not live with myself if we didn't at least _try_."

Sydney was silent, and Del lowered her head. "We've been through too much shit together, Syd. I couldn't give up on you…I _can't_. Don't ask me to."

The blonde half looked at her, then nodded. "Yeah…I guess I should listen to you. You're…_occasionally _right."

"Only occasionally?" Shepard hedged lightly, but the mood was too heavy for any real levity to cut through it. "What…what does Deirdre think?"

"She thinks we should try too. She's insistent on coming with me to Sur'Kesh…like a doting old mother hen."

"She just cares about you, Syd. She loves you."

"Hrmm," Sydney gruffed, but Shepard didn't miss the faint smile on her face, the way some of her tension seemed to melt away a little.

She turned and sat on the cot again, gesturing helplessly. "You remember when our shuttle was shot down, and you swam a mile to shore dragging my sorry ass along for the ride?"

"I do."

"You're doing it again, aren't you? I'm useless weight once more and you're determined to drag me to safety when what you _should_ be doing is letting me drown and saving your own ass."

"Sydney-" Shepard frowned. The blonde waved a hand slightly.

"Just…thank you, Del. I mean it. I don't know what's going to happen or what I'm facing but…well. I just hope that someday I can return the favor, you know? That I can be there for you when _you_ need saving."

Shepard felt her eyes heat faintly, and cleared her throat before straightening. "Won't happen. I'm too perfect to ever get my ass into _that_ much trouble."

Sydney gave a weary, but genuine laugh. "That so? I heard your 'ass' already got into trouble…"

Shepard gave a mock scowl. "Don't," she warned.

"What? It's not fair if _you're_ the 'butt' of the jokes?"

"Sydney!"

"I'm just trying to say that I trust you to cover my _rear,_ is all."

Del groaned, then shook her head with a faint chuckle, before her expression went serious again. "We'll be at the Citadel in a few days. Mordin's arranging for transport to Sur'Kesh from there."

Sydney nodded, clasping her hands between her knees. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to Anderson," Shepard said. "Those of the crew that wish to depart will leave at that time, and I will surrender myself and the _Normandy_ to him. Face the music, I guess."

"The Alliance should pin about twelve medals on you," Sydney told her. "Hopefully, they'll see that."

"Yes, well…I have Hackett and Anderson on my side, and hopefully FM Barrett too. I am under no illusions it will be pleasant and there are those that are going to try their damndest to skin me alive but…in the end I'm sure I'll get out none the worse for wear."

"What about Liara?"

Del looked downward a moment, jaw flexing slightly. "She'll be staying here. Wilcher is going to escort her back to the Broker ship on the _Styx _with a team…they'll clear what they can off of Hagalaz and then scuttle the base into the storm before Cerberus can get its mitts on it. After that…"

She shrugged helplessly. Sydney shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"I'll let Deirdre back in," Del told her. "And I will come down and see you again, I promise."

"Thank you, Shepard," Sydney murmured. "Take care of yourself, ok?"

Shepard gave a weak, lopsided smile. "You know I can't promise that."

"I know. If you _can_ though, promise me _this_…"

"What?"

"That you'll at _least_ cover your ass. Poor thing has been through a _lot_."

* * *

><p>Shimmering faintly under the work lights of the dry-dock, the fully repaired <em>Normandy<em> displayed its new coat of gray. Gone were all traces of any Cerberus insignia, and while it wasn't Alliance blue, it was a vast improvement as far as Shepard was concerned.

She'd healed enough to be cleared from the cane, though some faint residual stiffness still left her with a tad bit of a limp now and again. Chakwas assured her all traces of it would be gone soon and she'd be right back into fighting strength. As well, her injuries had left her with yet another set of scars. The one on the back of her thigh was a small, angrily purple divet that would fade to red and then white, given time. On her back, just below the wing of her left shoulder-blade was another splash of purple, an inch in diameter.

Finally there was the scar she could more than have done without…a small crescent moon shape that adorned a rather…_indelicate_…area. She was a bit shocked that Joker hadn't taken the comedy gold that was just dropped into his lap and run with it, but so far he hadn't made a single quip about the wound, not even with roundabout innuendo.

_Maybe he's afraid I'll saddle him with the Shepard VI again_, she thought. She had never seen a man so relieved in her life when she'd finally allowed him to shut that damn thing off.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Garrus?" she asked, standing on the work floor beside her friend. The turian nodded, glancing over his shoulder at the gathering a bit behind him.

"Yeah," he told her. "Liara's going to need what help she can get, and the least I can do for you is watch her back until she's somewhere safe. Besides, I've seen how you are when Liara's not around. The way you mope is _painful_ to watch…and really kind of pathetic. If something happened to her, we'd have to deal with that all the time and that's just not a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

"Yeah, love you too, fuckwad," Shepard smirked.

He flapped one mandible in amusement, then nodded. "Once she's safe, I'm going home to Palaven. Not holding out any hope I can get anyone to listen about the Reapers but I have to try."

Shepard nodded, and then to the turian's shock she gripped his hand and pulled him down into a hug. "I'm going to miss you, you ugly old shit."

"Yeah. I'm going to miss you too," he admitted, returning the hug a moment. Shepard slapped his back before releasing him.

All around them, several of the _Normandy_ crew were saying their good-byes to Thanatos. Shepard took Wilcher's big hand and gripped it hard.

"Thank you for everything, big guy," she told him. "Keep her safe."

"I'll guard her with my life, you can bet on that," he rumbled in reply. "We'll be keeping our ear turned to the news and doing what we can to help spread the word."

"Dr. Solus and his group will keep in contact with you, keep you updated on Sydney," Del said. "With any luck, she'll be home soon."

Liara parted from Kelly and Miranda and walked over. As she drew near, Shepard held out her hand. The asari took it and squeezed it tightly, allowing herself to be drawn in. Wilcher stepped back with a nod, turning away to give them some privacy.

They had exchanged their true good-byes the night before, but Shepard wanted to savor every moment she was given with the asari.

_It's not forever_, she reminded herself. _A few weeks, maybe months…until this mess with the Alliance is straightened out…_

Standing in each other's arms, their foreheads resting comfortably together as was their habit, the human and the asari just stood in silence for a long while, each trying to commit to memory the other's energy, warmth, smell.

Finally Liara moved slightly, shifting her hands in between their bodies and hooking the chain around her neck. Carefully, she drew out the dog-tags and slipped them off over her head. Looping the chain over Del's she settled it gently around her neck, then smoothed it so the tags lay straight.

"You promised you would come back, and you did," she said softly. "These are yours again."

"Liara-"

"An Alliance marine needs her dog-tags, Shepard," Liara affirmed, brooking no argument. Her palm rested on the tags as she leaned in and softly kissed her love. "I am going to miss you…"

Del hugged her almost crushingly close, clinging a moment before she kissed her cheek.

"I'm going to miss you too, Tianlán," she whispered roughly. Loosening her grip she cupped the asari's cheeks, letting her thumbs drift over her freckles. "When you can…when you're able, let me know you're safe, ok?"

"I will," Liara promised. "And I will see you again soon, Shepard. I love you…more than I can say."

"I love you too, Liara," Shepard murmured in reply. She cleared her throat, stepping back before she could lose her composure. Her fingers momentarily drifted through the asari's before she let her hand drop, and turned.

"All right, people!" she barked. "Those who are coming, move it on board! We lift in five!"

* * *

><p>"Thank you, Thug. It will be…it will be very good to see you again."<p>

Eír's pale lavender eyes seemed somehow paler, gloss with weary emotion. The shimmering holograph of the young krogan nodded its heavy head.

"It'll be good to see you again too," he rumbled. A moment later, the image faded as the call ended. Thug wasn't big on good-byes.

Leaning back in her chair, the young asari pressed a pair of long thin fingers to her forehead, eyes closing. As a hand slipped over her shoulder a moment later, she shifted that hand and took hold of the other one.

"I am surprised that Thug would leave Tuchanka," Shrive said gently, taking a seat on the arm of the chair. "His battle master, his new brothers…"

"He worries about me," Eír said tiredly. "Mother…Mother _made_ it so he would worry about me, so he'd be my protector."

"He'd worry about you even if she had not," Shrive prodded gently. "He is your brother, and while he is krogan and would never admit it, he loves you."

Eír's smile was faint, and she drew Shrive's hand over to her cheek, resting the back of it against her skin. "I am glad to have the chance to see him," she admitted. "Calls are not the same."

"I admit, I am looking forward to having a krogan around again. It has been strange being so long outside their company," Shrive said. Before she had left Tuchanka with Eír, Shrive hadn't spent a day of her entire life not surrounded by krogan. They were her family, after all, and her clan.

She hated the exhausted look on Eír's face. Though the nightly cinching had prevented any biotic displays, her nightmares refused to leave her alone. Sometimes they woke her two or three times a night.

Always, it was the same dream. Following Thug only to realize the athenaeum was burning, that Shrive was trapped and dying inside. Struggling to return only to find the effort fruitless, a chained Gellian touting her _I told you so's _while a grotesque monster parody of Shepard mocked and laughed nearby.

She had described it to Shrive, of course, and the older huntress had seen echoes of it when they Joined, the images dancing like ghosts in the distance beyond even Eír's power to seal them away or block them out.

Threading her fingers through Eír's, Shrive rose and gently tugged the other girl to her feet.

"Come," she murmured and turned, leading her back to the bedroom. She was determined to soothe her somewhat, allow her to have at least an hour or two of rest and peace.

Eír, of course, did not resist. Shrive was her only oasis of peace, the only shore she had to cling to at the moment. Until Solus could erase this hatred Gellian had stamped on her soul, Eír needed all the comforting she could get.

They made love, Shrive carefully yet insistently shifting away any unpleasant thought and memory from her love's subconscious as they fell deep into the Joining. Afterward, she lay with Eír curled against her, listening to the soft, slow rhythms of the other asari's breathing as she slept. Her own eyes remained open, unfocused as she seemed to search the ether between bed and ceiling for some hidden truth, some mystical answer.

_Goddess, please…_she thought silently. _Just…just __**please**__…_

* * *

><p>Shepard stood in the Nest, hands on her hips, bare toes almost measuring perfectly with the edge of the first step leading down into the bedroom. She scrutinized the space as if trying to determine what was missing from it.<p>

They were a day out from the Folly, seventeen hours still from the Citadel. Upon departure she had contacted Anderson and informed him of her intentions.

"Give me one hour after docking, that's all I ask," she had told him. "Then I will surrender both the _Normandy_ and myself to whatever Alliance officer and escort crew you arrange to meet me."

She wanted that hour to give her team and crew the chance to vanish into the station or onto separate transports if they so desired. This was _her_ music to face, and they had their own lives to live. She didn't want her fire back-lashing on to them.

Now she stood here, in an empty Nest that was pristine and yet…not the same. Rat was gone, her habitat removed. The dead white brides had been cleared from the tank, and it now stood empty…a dark mirror that only reflected her ghost back at herself.

Her crew, both those who had been taken from the ship and those who had fought to bring them back, were worn, quiet, brooding in dark thoughts and unpleasant memories. Kelly had broken down into tears thanking Del for saving her. Helen had confessed to Shepard that she had realized when they were rescued that she'd never had dearer friends than Del and Joker before in her life. The tears had started for the older woman, too, when she told Shepard how horrible she felt, remembering how she had told Anderson she didn't think the Commander was stable, or could be trusted.

Shepard had only been able to hug her, awkwardly doing her best to let Chakwas know she didn't blame her for her prior opinions. Truthfully, they were not exactly unwarranted, but she understood the doctor's sentiments.

Now, they were going home. It seemed a million lifetimes ago since Shepard had been home, since she'd put on the Alliance blues and felt comfortable in her own skin. Though from her point of view it had only been a few months, it felt like she'd aged horrendously since then. She felt withered, weak…exhausted.

_{Commander, there is a call coming on for you on secure channels,}_ EDI said, her voice blinking Del from her thoughts. An almost murderous scowl creased the human woman's face.

"It's not the Illusive Man, is it? Because if it _is_-"

_{Negative, Commander. The call is being forwarded with highly encrypted Alliance protocols. It is flagged as 'confidential'.}_

_Must be Anderson,_ she thought, then nodded. "Forward it to the room projector and make sure the Nest is secure."

Though the _Normandy_ had been stripped bare of all Cerberus monitoring, control, and archiving equipment during her repair, Shepard's healthy sense of paranoia reminded her she could never be too careful.

_{Understood. Call forwarding now. You may access it at your discretion.}_

Shepard moved to her desk, the call already flashing on her console. Highlighting it, she verified the line was secure before closing connection. The room projector took over, and a man's holographic form shimmered into being nearby.

"Admiral Hackett," she blinked in genuine surprise, then reflexively straightened, saluting. "To what do I owe the honor, sir?"

"Shepard, it's good to see you again," he replied. "Anderson informed me of your plans to return to the Alliance and surrender the _Normandy_."

"Yes, sir. The Collector base is destroyed. They are no longer a threat to our colonists. You should be receiving a sizable information packet outlining all relevant mission data and I am more than happy to provide a detailed debrief upon my return."

"I look forward to it, Commander. However before you dock at the Citadel…I have something of a personal favor to ask of you."

"Sir?"

"What I am about to impart is completely classified, Shepard, is that understood?"

"Of course, sir."

"One of our deep cover operatives, Dr. Amanda Kenson, has been arrested by batarians in the Bahak system. She was investigating rumors of a possible Reaper artifact in batarian space, and the last official message we received from her indicated she had found it."

Shepard was startled. "A Reaper artifact? I thought the Alliance discounted the Reaper threat as speculative."

"Officially the Alliance has taken no stance one way or the other. _Unofficially_, however, FM Barrett is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, as are Anderson and I. We feel we'd be fools not to at least investigate the possibilities."

"And Kenson reported she had found this artifact," Shepard stated.

"Affirmative. We lost communication with her shortly afterward, and intel now indicates she was arrested by the batarians and taken to a prison at the colony of Aratoht."

Shepard stiffened. She knew that the Bahak system sounded familiar. Aratoht. That was where Liara's sister and her bondmate had gone…that was the _one_ place in the galaxy Shepard had promised to avoid, lest there be horrific repercussions.

"Shepard, we need what information Kenson was able to discover. More, she's an old friend, and I won't leave her to rot in a batarian prison."

"What do you want me to do, sir?" she asked.

"I need you to go to Aratoht, get her out of there. The _Normandy_'s stealth systems will allow you to enter the system and remain undetected, so long as Joker is discrete. It is absolutely vital we avoid an incident over this with the batarians. Officially this cannot be an Alliance operation. A whole squad raiding the place would be disastrous. The batarians would kill Amanda if they so much as thought they sniffed commandos."

"So this is just me…going in alone, doing a favor for a friend."

"Correct," he replied. "If anyone can do this, Shepard, it's you. This isn't all about plausible deniability. Kenson and I have been through a lot together. You are the only chance anyone has of getting her out of there alive and intact."

Del's dark brows drew down, before she grimly nodded. "Yes, sir. I will have Joker head for the Bahak system immediately."

Though Hackett was normally an impeccably disciplined man, she saw his shoulders sag ever so slightly as he let out a breath of relief. "Thank you, Commander. I will forward what intel we do have to your omni-tool. Get in, get her out, get home."

"Quick and quiet," Shepard promised, and saluted again. He returned the gesture with a nod.

"Hackett out."

The moment his image vanished Del's shoulders sagged forward and she let out a frustrated blast of air, raking a hand back through her hair. "Fuck," she stated to the room in general. "Fuck fuck _fuck_. Why the _fuck _did it have to be _Aratoht?_"

Her omni-tool chimed as the information arrived. Glowering, she pulled it up, filing through the reports, scrutinizing what they knew of the prison. As she perused, she lifted her voice.

"Joker, I have a course correction."

_{Commander?}_

"Put in for the Bahak system."

_{I thought we were going to the Citadel…? Bahak…that's batarian sp-}_

"I _know_ where it is, pilot!" she snapped. "You have your orders. Bahak system. _Ma shang_!"

_{Yes ma'am. Changing course now. ETA, eight hours.}_

Returning her full attention to the intel she sat down at her console, drawing up information on the system, focusing on Aratoht. Some of the ball of tension in her gut eased slightly.

_Looks like the prison is nearly five miles outside the colony proper_, she thought. _There shouldn't be any chance of accidentally running into Eír or Shrive. In fast, out fast…and I don't get turned inside out by a murderous biotic._

It was still an enormous risk, though one she _had_ to take. Even if it hadn't been Hackett asking…even if this Kenson hadn't been his friend…if she did indeed find a Reaper artifact the information she held could mean the difference between survival and utter annihilation. It could mean that defenses could be developed, early-warning systems implemented. Fuck, if it just served as _proof_ the Reapers actually existed, enough solid evidence to make the galaxy as a whole sit up and pay attention, it was worth almost _any_ cost.

Shepard hadn't been on a solo infiltration mission in years, but it looked like that was about to change…and she had only eight hours in which to plan.

* * *

><p>It was dark, and it was raining.<p>

The latter made footing treacherous, the former providing a masking blanket of heavy shadow that swallowed and absorbed the motions of a much smaller, much more devious shadow as it slipped along the rough stone wall.

In the interests of stealth and ease of motion, Shepard had set aside her normal hard-suit for simple armor and a black skin-suit. She didn't bear a full weapons-pack, the weight of which would simply have slowed her down, but she was far from unarmed. On her back she carried not only her sniper but the phoenix katana Kasumi had given her…its first maiden voyage into potential combat. On her hip, she carried a single pistol, replacement thermal clips locked into her belt. In her boot, there was her dagger.

Entering the prison itself proved not to be difficult. Once inside, she could tell this was hardly the impenetrable, high-tech fortress of some Alliance facilities.

For one, the structure was old. It had probably been here as long as the colony. There were a few monitoring devices and security doors but no motion sensors, no thermal alert system, no mech patrols or DNA scans or voice print ID accesses…it was downright primitive.

_Primitive_, however, did not mean _safe_. The guards were still heavily armed _and_ armored. She could still make a stupid mistake and get not only herself, but Kenson, killed in the process.

_Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Survive my childhood, survive Torfan, survive that goddamn suicide mission into the galactic core…just to buy it from some jumpy, trigger happy prison guard in this pit-hole._

Hearing approaching footsteps, Shepard melted into a small supply nook that was little more than a hollowed out crack in the stone and brick. Dark brown eyes glimmered from the shadows as one of the guards wandered past, his weapon held loosely, the look on his face pure boredom. Shepard's fingers tightened around the handle of the dagger, ready to have it in his throat before any sound could emerge if he spotted her, but the idiot didn't so much as glance her way.

As he walked past, she frowned to herself. How could a man put on any kind of uniform, be it marine or prison guard, without learning to check _every goddamn corner_ while on patrol?

_Can it, Shep. His idiocy is to your benefit, remember? If they're all that stupid, this should be a complete cake-walk._

She knew better, of course. She'd had more than one unpleasant experience with batarians, and she had learned long ago that they were nothing but tenacious, cunning. If she let her guard down because of one moron, her bleached skull would be on some asshole's desk as a paperweight before the night was over.

Passing through the first building without incident, she edged out into the wet night once again. A courtyard separated her from the section where Kenson was being held. Finding a secluded spot, she unshipped her sniper and used the scope to survey the situation.

Four guards were in the yard. Two were smoking and talking near the entrance to the garrison. The other two were lazily patrolling, weapons in hand but held loose. Drifting her sights over the next building she noted each entrance, quickly plotting the best route that would get her into one unseen.

Waiting for the nearest patroller to pass by and start the other direction, Shepard slipped silently from her cover, hurrying along the wall and ducking around a corner. Pressing her back to stone she forced herself to count through twelve breaths.

No alarm.

Less than a minute after that, she was in the cell-block and that much closer to her goal.

_All right, Kenson. So far so good. Let's get this done._

* * *

><p>The hands were small, but unmarked with age, despite the sweat-soaked gray hair that hung into the face of their owner. Clenching into fists, the hands yanked futilely at the iron that kept them pinned at the wrists, iron that kept her restrained.<p>

Eyes the color flint warily followed the muscular form that paced in front of her, lines set in the corner of lips thinned with pain deepening.

"I don't hear any begging," the batarian smiled coldly, pausing to fix her eyes with two of his. "I thought that's what you humans did…_beg_."

"I'll not beg from the likes of you," she spat.

"Oh, I think you _will_," he replied, and lifted his omni-tool. A moment later, fingers of frozen fire shot their way up her spine, roared through her head and burst in an unbidden wail from her throat. It lasted only a moment before it faded, leaving her muscles knotted and shaking, the taste of ozone and tin in her mouth.

"That's only a _taste_," the interrogator promised. "If it were up to me, I'd power this thing up and watch you cook, watch your eyes boil right out of your skull. But, we need information. We know you were planning on blowing up the relay. Where are your compatriots?"

She grit her teeth, flint eyes sparking fire, and said nothing.

"No, 'go to hell'?" he asked with some amusement. "No, 'I'll never talk!'? How about, 'do your worst, you won't break me-'"

He broke off with a startled gurgle as three inches of blade emerged from his chest plate like a knife cutting through soft bread. He blinked, looking down at it, before the blade ripped back. He dropped to his knees, then slowly collapsed, baring the figure behind him.

It was a human female, that much was clear, though her features were obscured under a skin-hood and some infra-spec goggles. Amanda could see the butt of a sniper rifle over her shoulder, and in her hand she was holding…a _sword_? Good God, it actually was a _sword_.

"Fucker's watched too many movies," the assassin grumped, stepping over the body even as she wiped the blade swiftly off on her leg, sheathing it with an almost careless toss of her hand. She called up the restraint controls and released them.

Kenson sagged forward, her legs refusing at first to hold her. Her strange benefactor half-caught her.

"You all right? Can you walk?"

"I just need a moment," she reassured, steadying herself before forcing herself up again. "Who…"

"I'm Shepard," the woman replied. "Hackett sent me to get you out of here."

"Steven…_Commander_ Shepard?"

"The one and only. We can't hang around, we have to get moving. There's a small shuttle launch not too far from here. You good to move?"

"Yes…yes, I'm fine."

"Good. Here."

Shepard unshipped her pistol and pressed it into the woman's hands. She didn't need to make sure she knew how to use it…if she was a deep-cover operative, she'd gotten at least the same basic training as any marine and probably some more specialized training, scientist or no.

Swiping some sweat-grimed hair away from her face, the woman checked the weapon quickly, then nodded grimly.

"Let's get out of here."


	70. Chapter 70

The two batarians were talking, the first in great animation, striding back and forth as he spoke. His companion was still, leaning on the far wall, all four of his eyes following his friend as he listened.

They were in a very unfortunate location, a small maintenance bay that was joined by one hall to the shuttle bay, a second to a small security hub, and a third to the block where Kenson had been held.

"Fucking human terrorists," the pacer was growling. "It's bad enough we have that crazy asari lurking around the colony like a goddamn vorcha, now we got humans crawling through our asteroid belt planning to wipe us all out!"

"Blowing up a relay…you think that's even possible?" the leaner asked. "I always heard they were indestructible."

"Yeah, well…_sure_, but, that's not the point! They steal our space, our creds, our best trade routes…they won't be happy until every last batarian is wiped out of the stars. And what does the Council do about it?"

"Nothing," his companion agreed.

"_Nothing_! But _we_ try and retaliate and suddenly _we're_ the terrorists!"

"At least we caught their ringleader this time, right? I heard Belkik is determined to make an example out of her. Show the humans we're serious."

"He should do _more_ than that. Get the Hegemony to tack her skin on the nosecone of their largest cruiser, and have it lead the charge right to Earth. Wipe all the vermin out at the root. That's what _I _would do."

Behind them, far above, the barrel of a sniper slowly eased out from the edge of a cat-walk.

"It's a nice idea, but you know as well as I that our people aren't-"

The moment the pacer stepped in line with his friend again, about to pass him, the sniper went off with a faint puff. Both men collapsed as the single shot passed through the head of the pacer, through the head of the leaner, and then lodged in the concrete wall.

"Nice shot," Kenson breathed her approval as Shepard drew the gun back again.

"Let's get moving," Shepard urged in a low voice, quickly leading the way down from the catwalk to the floor. As they reached the door that lead into the small security hub, she shipped her sniper, drawing her sword.

Gesturing at Kenson to stay put, she eased down the hall. The single guard monitoring the feeds was half-dozing. He never even glanced around before Shepard struck him in the temple hard enough with the handle of her weapon to render him instantly unconscious. Slipping him out of the chair and laying him down, she signaled Kenson and stepped aside as the woman quickly rushed in, accessing the prison systems.

The facility was small, and old, but one thing they _did_ have was access to the planetary defense grid. If they hijacked a shuttle, the automated systems would take over and they'd be blown apart by AA guns before they even made it a thousand feet.

Shepard covered the door as Kenson quickly hacked in, disabling the guns. "We won't have long before they notice, and we'll be swarmed," she said as she rejoined the commander. "We'll have to hurry."

Quickly crossing the maintenance room again they headed toward the shuttle bay. This time, Shepard didn't bother for stealth…speed was of the essence now. She had her sniper out and set and strode in through the doors like she owned the place.

Two batarians were down before they even registered she was there. Kenson took out another as the remainder started reaching for their weapons. Shepard popped a fourth just as he reached out to hit the alarm.

"Go, _move_! I'll cover you!" she barked at Kenson, switching the sniper over to rapid fire and quickly corralling the final three batarians behind some storage boxes. Alarms began to ring, of course. All it took was one of them linking in to the system with their omni-tool. They had a minute, maybe two, before the whole bay would be swarmed.

Kenson got the shuttle open, turning as she made it inside and aiming her pistol. "C'mon, Commander! I've got you covered," she urged. Shepard ran up the ramp as Kenson sent a few shots toward the boxes, keeping the batarians pinned and unable to return fire until Shepard leapt inside, slamming her palm on the door control.

As it swung shut, Kenson hurried in to the small cockpit and dropped into the pilot's seat. "Hang on, this is going to be blunt."

Shepard gripped the edge of the partition as the shuttle suddenly lunged forward. Until the inertial dampeners kicked in, the frantic acceleration and initial swoop upward into open air tugged hard on her, threatening to make her stumble. Moments later, the dampeners were on and the ride notably steadied.

"We're clear," Kenson said. "In less than five we'll be completely out of range of those guns, and it'll take them at least ten to get them back online. I think we're safe, but it will be at least an hour before we get back to the Project."

Hooking her fingers under the hood of her skin-suit, Shepard peeled it back, taking the infra-goggles with it. Scrubbing her fingers through her damp hair she leaned on the partition. "You gonna tell me about this Project?" she asked. "Were those batarians telling the truth, and you're planning to blow up their mass relay?"

"It is a long story, Commander-"

"We have an hour," Shepard said sternly. "I'd like to hear-"

She broke off abruptly, snapping around. Her pistol was in her hand in the same motion, eyes narrowed as it pointed directly at the forehead of the batarian standing seven or eight feet behind her, a heavy spanner in his hand.

He paled a bit as he saw the gun, licking his lips nervously. Shepard decided to make his decision simple, revealing to him the only smart course he could take.

"_Drop it."_

Fingers shaking, he let the spanner thump to the ground, lifting his hands in weak surrender. He was little more than a boy, probably just old enough to finally be out on his own, working a real job. Kenson, having switched the shuttle to auto, appeared over Shepard's shoulder, her own weapon in hand.

"He must have been working in the storage area when we took off. Bad luck for him."

Lifting her free hand, Del gestured at Kenson to wait. "What's your name, kid?" she asked the batarian.

"Kelcik," he replied. Shepard pointed at the floor between the benches.

"Kelcik, have a seat," she ordered. "Move nice and slow, hands threaded behind your head, legs crossed."

As he moved to obey, Kenson murmured, "Wouldn't it be safer just to eliminate the threat?" she asked.

"I don't kill unarmed boys who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Shepard told her. Instantly she saw the reflection of something in Kenson's eyes, and felt her gut tighten. The woman said nothing, of course, but she could feel the accusation there.

_Liar_, it said. _I remember the reports of Torfan_. _That is, in fact, __**exactly**__ what you do._

Whether or not Kenson actually _thought_ this was irrelevant. Whether it was her accusation or simply a reflection of Del's own regrets, it didn't really matter. The truth was, she _had_ once shot a batarian boy, not much younger than this, while he sat unarmed on his knees. On his knees, and _apologetic._

"The Project doesn't really have anything in the way of holding facilities," Kenson continued. "It's not like we can bang him in a cell-"

"A lockable closet with a guard will do just fine until we can arrange to drop him somewhere," Shepard said firmly. "I'm _not _shooting him. Unless he does something very _stupid_."

This last was directed firmly at the boy, who shook his head…though she noticed the glare had not left his eyes.

_Then again, I'd probably be glaring at someone who was holding me at gunpoint, as well,_ she thought.

Seating herself where she had a clear view of the boy, keeping her pistol out and resting on her knee…though still fully aimed in his direction…she spoke to Kenson once again. "So…_long story_. You were about to tell me what's going on."

Seating herself as well, putting her weapon away, the older woman sighed. "I suppose it doesn't matter if I say anything in front of him. By the time he'll be in a position to tell anyone, things will be finished, one way or the other."

Clearing her throat she told Shepard about the Project, and what she called 'Object Rho'. It was a Reaper artifact they had discovered in the system. Astronomically old, yet still in pristine working condition. Research revealed that the Reapers used the Bahak system as a second resort should their plan at the Citadel somehow fail. On the outermost edges of the galaxy, the Reapers could enter the system directly from dark space, and use the relay…the Alpha relay…to link anywhere else in the Milky Way instantly. Before anyone could be warned, the Reapers could be at Thessia, Palaven, the Citadel, or even Earth. The attack would have begun before any defensive systems or fleets could react.

"We devised a plan," she told Del. "Drive an asteroid with enough mass and density into the relay, and it will be destroyed. We cannot stop the Reapers arriving in the Bahak system but we can slow them down, prevent them using the Alpha relay. It will take them months or even years to reach the next closest relay even at FTL speeds, during which time our defenses can be strengthened. It is the only choice we have."

"Would it work?" Shepard asked with a puzzled frown. "A relay really can be destroyed?"

"I know that everyone says they can't, but I think it's more they don't want to find out what happens when one is," Kenson told her. "Given the size of a relay's core, its destruction would likely release as much energy as a supernova-"

"Which would destroy this entire system!" Kelcik gasped. He started to lower his hands and Shepard pointed her pistol meaningfully at him. He put them back into place, but he was shaking. "You can't do that! My entire family lives on Aratoht! There are three hundred thousand colonists there…you would kill them _all_? I can't believe even _humans_ would do such a thing! Women…_babies-_!"

"We're _not _going to kill them," Kenson looked both horrified and scandalized. "We were going to _warn_ them first, allow time for an evacuation…my God, we're not monsters! Even if we did nothing, Aratoht would be lost…or do you think the Reapers will simply pass it by on their way through the relay?"

"There are no such thing as _Reapers_," the boy spat. "It is lies, human propaganda! Crazy talk spread by crazy people!"

"Hey, calm down," Shepard told him, not unkindly. Looking at Kenson she asked. "What kind of timeframe are we looking at here?"

"We were nearly ready when I was arrested," she said. "At this point…we have just under three days until the Reapers will enter the system."

"Three days is long enough to clear the colony, but it's pushing it," Shepard said. "You're absolutely _sure_ about the timing?"

"Positive, Commander. I have proof if you would like to see it, once we've reached the station."

Del nodded. "All right, yeah, I'll want to see that. No offense…I know Hackett trusts you and I trust Hackett…but if we're talking about risking this many lives I want to be absolutely certain of things."

_My God, I sound just like the fucking Council,_ she groaned internally, then frowned. _No. The Council wouldn't accept the proof even if it was slammed repeatedly into their various faces._

"Of course, Commander," Kenson stated. Lifting her omni-tool she activated it. "This is Dr. Kenson, are you receiving?"

"_This is Project Headquarters. I can't tell you how good it is to hear your voice again, Doctor!"_

"It's good to be heard," she smiled. "Listen, I'm on my way home now. We should be there within the hour. I have Commander Shepard with me and…a batarian _guest_. I want secure arrangements made for the batarian and…tidy up the lab, would you? Commander Shepard would like to have a look at things."

"_**The**__ Commander Shep…? Uh…yes. Yes ma'am. I understand. We'll get things in line."_

"Thank you. Kenson out."

Though she didn't for a second take her eyes off the prisoner, Del leaned back in her seat, her dark brows knitting as she turned this all over in her head. An entire colony to evacuate, a relay destroyed…mere days before the Reapers were out of dark space and knocking on their front door?

_Three hundred thousand people,_ she thought. _Shrive and Eír among them. If Kenson is right, this is going to be a clusterfuck wrapped in FUBAR. And the boy's attitude is not unusual…the batarians are hardly going to just take our __**word **__for it. Hopefully they'll listen to reason and evacuate but if they don't…what happens then? Do we just sacrifice all those lives in a bid to buy the rest of us some time?_

* * *

><p>A pair of armed guards were waiting for them when they docked at Project HQ, the structure built into the side of the very asteroid they intended to launch at the relay. The size of a small moon, the asteroid was a solid chunk of almost pure nickel and nearly twenty times the mass of the relay itself. The Project had chosen well.<p>

Shepard turned Kelcik over to the guard, Kenson ordering them that the boy was not to be harmed…upon Shepard's very stern look. Then the doctor led Del deeper into the facility.

"What is this?" Shepard asked, catching sight of a holographic display shimmering on nearly every wall and over nearly every door.

"That is how much time we have left before the Reapers will have arrived," Kenson told her. "Object Rho is sending out a distinct pulse at regular, decreasing intervals. It is reacting to the proximity of the Reapers. When that clock runs out, the pulses will be constant and the Reapers will be here."

"You are absolutely convinced that's what it means?"

"Positive," Kenson told her, striding down a bustling corridor. More than one head turned to watch them go, and Shepard felt that familiar, warning crawl begin deep in her stomach. Her gut didn't like this.

"How?"

"When we first uncovered Rho it presented a vision into my mind," Kenson told her. "Much like the Prothean Beacons did to you. It showed me the Reapers arriving here."

"Uh…that's _not_ good," Shepard gaped, slightly alarmed. "Aren't you concerned about indoctrination?"

"Very," Kenson responded. "We are taking every precaution, Commander, I assure you…and then some. We are not risking that a single person among us become indoctrinated, and I have been examined a dozen times since the vision was presented. I'm showing no signs of the process myself."

Shepard frowned, but said nothing as they cleared through one security checkpoint, and then another. Finally they arrived a set of heavy doors.

"This is the main lab facility," Kenson announced. "Our records and documentation are all within."

The door slid open and the older woman strode unhesitatingly within, Del at her heels. Only a few steps past the door, Shepard jolted to a halt, unable to believe her eyes.

That the thing dominating the center of the room was of the Reapers, she had no doubt. No one who had ever seen a Reaper or any of their technology could mistake it. There was a feel about it, a presence that was outside of simple understanding…a sensation that was unmistakable yet indescribable at the same time.

It was sitting out in the open, no barriers, no shields, no containment system of any kind. In appearance it was a strange, frozen flower bud of black metal lined with green luminescence…a luminescence that seemed to grow stronger even as the deep, unending presence grew stronger. Shepard could feel it in her skin, crawling like snakes over her scalp.

"Kenson, this is _not_ _good_!" she growled, taking half a step backward…before the distinct click of a pistol halted her.

The older woman held the weapon up to the side of Shepard's head, her jaw set, a thin smile on her lips. "Give it a moment, Commander…it will provide the proof you need."

"You're _indoctrinated_," Shepard snarled low, eyes shifting as a few armed guards in full gear appeared from the far side of the room. "_All _of you."

"No, our eyes are finally _opened,_" Kenson told her. "We will not let you stop the Reapers, Shepard. You _will _join us. You _will_ see the truth, as we have, and when they arrive, you _will_ share in their blessings the same as we…or you _will_ die."

Those snakes on her scalp seemed to grow teeth. She could feel them prying at her skull, starting to dig in.

Fuck. _This_.

Whipping her hand out she caught Kenson's arm, wrenching the pistol from her fingers. Kenson's wrist gave way with a snap, and she grunted in pain as Shepard shoved her aside. Instantly, the guards opened fire and Del darted away, sending shot after them.

The door behind her was closed, of course, and no doubt sealed. Ducking behind cover, Shepard knew she had to get out of there as quickly as she could. Every moment in the presence of Rho and the chances she herself would become indoctrinated would only increase.

She'd fucking put a bullet in her brain _herself_ if that happened.

"Argh!" Kenson groaned in pain, holding her arm as she got to her feet. "Get in here! _All teams_! Secure Commander Shepard! _All teams_!"

_Fuck._ Shepard was geared for an infiltration assignment…her light armor might as well be tissue paper under heavy assault fire, even with her barriers, and the weaponry she was carrying was hardly adequate for taking out fully armored commandos.

_Bad, Del…this is __**really**__ bad._

Warily, the troops already in the room began to circle around, trying to box her in. Lifting her sniper she popped two, dropping their barriers and then their bodies with follow-up shots to their face-plates. Spooked, the others retreated a little, affording her a bit of breathing space.

Where Kenson had gone, Del couldn't see. What she _could _see were more armored soldiers entering the room from the far end.

Assault fire burned over her cover and she ducked back, feeling her fingertips cooling. She was dropping into the zone, her blood-pressure easing, her heart rate actually slowing as her mind shifted gears. There was only one goal…a goal that Shepard was very, _very_ good at reaching.

Survive.

Deadly calm had settled over her. She couldn't even feel the scratching at her scalp, the tightening fingers on her spine from the artifact. A thin, set little smile appeared on her lips.

These fuckers were going _down._

* * *

><p>"We can't keep this up forever!" One of the soldiers shouted into his radio, his voice ragged and desperate. For the last twenty minutes they had been throwing everything they had into the fight and they were losing.<p>

_Losing._ Against a single woman in light armor who had no escape.

They didn't have many men left. The bitch was deadly with that sniper and the one time a man had actually managed to get near her, she'd killed him with a sword.

A goddamn _sword,_ for fuck's sake!

Their numbers were running low, they were exhausted, and half of them had no barriers thanks to her relentless and precise strikes.

"Keep going! For crying out loud, she's _one woman_! How incompetent _are_ you?" Kenson barked, making him grit his teeth.

That was all well and good, but at this rate, the crazy cunt would wipe them _all_ out.

_One woman, my ass_, he thought. _This bitch isn't __**human.**_

* * *

><p>In the end it was not truly the soldiers that got her. Focusing so much on survival, on taking down her enemies and hoping for a break to open, a route to escape, Shepard barely heard the voice whispering indelibly in the back of her mind…the hushed, dry breath of the dead stirring from the grave.<p>

She ignored the slowly grinding pain in her skull, the tripping of claws down her back. To tune into them meant losing her concentration…if she did _that_, she had no doubt she would be dead the second after.

Those claws, however, finally tightened their grip and in the end, it was the vision that shattered her.

Only two or three wounded, exhausted opponents were left when every muscle along her spine and skull seemed to clench at once. Reality darted away in the wake of a roaring, blaring agony that brought with it a flash of an image…the Reapers, darkening the sky, eyes alight as they bore down inexorably on the Alpha relay.

Doubtless this was the same vision Kenson had seen, a unshakable knowing of the Reapers arrival, of their plans.

Jolting in the wake of it, Shepard gasped for air, desperately clawing at consciousness, trying to tear the scene free of her mind like one might rip paper off a wall.

Grudgingly, the lab swam back into sight, but it was too late. The distraction had left her open.

It was her downfall.

She felt the punch of the first bullet through her chest as if in slow motion, the bullet gouging flames just below her collar bone and rending molten lava out her back. Even as she collapsed, arms flailing to either side in a futile effort to catch herself, another lance flashed through the side of her abdomen, flaying muscle as it drove a gouge as neat and clean as a filleting knife just over her hip.

The final shot took her in the head, the sound of it a rocketing drone echoing endlessly in her skull.

The fall was an eternity, but she had no memory of hitting the ground. Her eyes fixed to the ceiling as her body fought to process what had just happened to it, pain fading as it shut down her nerves in shock. Dark bloomed in her vision like a dozen black roses edged with red, and for a moment, she saw Kenson's face looming over hers. Her eyes were shimmering strangely, and the voice that ushered Del into darkness was that of Harbinger.

**YOU BELONG TO US.**

* * *

><p><em>Where are you? Where are you?<em>

"M'right here…"

Lips barely moved, the breath passing through them to form words only a soft exhalation. Voices, sounds, floated through thick fog in the company of an aching beat.

"…readings are strange…doing another….no, no see, there's a diff…looked like she was waking up…"

A thousand tiny pins pricked her sinuses, the backs of her eyelids. Grimacing, Del licked her dry lips and struggled her eyes open, trying to focus.

"…no, gave her enough sedatives to knock a krogan on its ass. Yes, I'm sure, it's just the brainwave scans seemed to spike for a moment. Looked like she was going to wake up…"

Once the fog and dark started to clear, the remainder seemed to burn away in a rush as memory returned, adrenaline to flow.

Kenson. Object Rho. She'd been shot-

Her vision snapped into focus. There was a light above her, a medical scanning arm. She was in an infirmary. Turning her head, she saw the single doctor standing to one side, her back to the bio-bed. It was not Chakwas, the surroundings unfamiliar.

_I must still be at the Project base. _

Taking stock as best she could, she noted only a faint ache in her chest, in her head. Testing her limbs carefully, she pushed herself into a sit.

She was in scrubs. Clearly, she'd been treated. Lifting a hand she touched her head gingerly, finding only a slightly tender bare strip from her left temple back over her ear. Bullet hadn't penetrated then, only split her scalp open.

As she got to her bare feet, the doctor suddenly turned, still speaking into her omni-tool. "No, I just wanted you to be aware. It's an anomaly, that's all. There's no way she could actually…"

She caught sight of Shepard standing there, staring at her, and went pale, even as her eyes flew almost comically huge. To her credit, she reacted fairly swiftly, immediately bolting for the door even while hollering, "_She's awake_!"

She was through it before Shepard could cross the room, her legs still a bit faint and numb from the sedatives. The door to the bay slammed shut and latched. Through an observation window, Del could see the doctor…now looking smug…regarding her.

Smug never lasted long when Shepard was around.

Cracking her neck audibly, Shepard looked around at her surroundings. Something as simple as a secure door was _not_ going to stand in her way. She had no idea how much more time they had, if _any_…but she had to get the fuck out of here regardless.

Spotting the active console on the other side of the room, she lifted a brow, then turned her head and met the eyes of the doctor still watching her.

The doctor paled.

Shepard grinned.

* * *

><p>His gut was a wrenching ache of pain…a gnawing, persistent pain that seemed to leach down into his limbs.<p>

How long had passed, he didn't know. He slept on and off, more and more often falling into slumber and finding it increasingly difficult to rouse himself again. His mouth was a desert, his eyes ached in their sockets.

The distant, odd pelting of thunder woke him this time. He resisted it at first, not wanting to return to the aching head, the misery spreading through his being…a feeling that instinctually registered on his brain as _dying_ though he swiped the word away from his conscious mind.

Blinking, unfocused a moment, he forced himself up to his feet. A roil of nausea immediately wrenched his stomach. His legs trembled weakly, and he pressed a shaking hand to the wall, bracing himself as he tried to listen.

The thunder repeated twice more, closer each time, before he finally processed what it was.

Gunfire.

Just then, the loudest report sounded just outside the door. Stumbling back from it, he dropped into a sit, scooting into the corner and blinking madly as the portal suddenly slipped open. The light that spilled in was white-hot agony and he defensively lifted a hand against it.

"_Cao!"_ someone declared, before a form drew close, crouching in front of him. His wrist was taken, lowered. He blinked stupidly at the human as his eyes focused.

"Leave me alone," he heard himself mumble miserably. "You did this…does it make you happy? Just let me die…"

* * *

><p>Shepard had discovered her belongings not too far from the infirmary. After taking care of the door and the doctor -with some creative use of security mechs- she had looked up the location of her gear and tracked it to a locker. Her light-suit was gone, of course…they had cut it off of her to tend her wounds. Her sniper, pistol, dog-tags, katana, and boot-dagger were there, and she swiftly armed up.<p>

Even with the weapons, however, she was in trouble. Thin scrubs were even less protection against bullets than light armor was. The first person she came upon that had an assault rifle would cut her in half, if she wasn't careful.

Fortunately, luck seemed to be on her side for once. The first guard she came to was a woman, not that much taller than she was. It took some doing to get her out of the picture but just minutes later Del was fully suited, helmeted, and ready to cause some _serious _damage.

The scrolling countdown still prevalent nearly everywhere she looked showed she had been unconscious for over two days. Less than two hours remained on the clock before the Arrival, and Miranda and Joker were probably going crazy on the _Normandy_.

They had no idea what her mission was or what was at stake, only that she had ordered them to remain in hidden solar orbit until she contacted them. With no timeframe given they would do as bid, though Del had no doubt that in another solar day, if _that,_ Miranda would begin to look for her…orders be _damned._

Right now, however, Shepard's priorities were clear. The Project may be ready to launch but Kenson and the staff here…now indoctrinated from their contact with Object Rho…would never initialize it. They _wanted_ the Reapers to succeed, and they'd do everything they could to re-detain Shepard and make certain that happened.

Shepard had to get this rock moving. If the Reapers arrived and the relay was still whole, there would be no hope for the rest of the galaxy. As for Aratoht, there was still time to warn the colony _if_ she could get a communications uplink…she doubted everyone could evacuate in time but at least a great deal of them could be saved.

If they listened.

_Don't think like that. You have to __**try**__. _

Almost forcibly shoving the lives at stake into the back of her head, Shepard started through the station. It did not take long before its occupants were aware she was awake and loose, though she had eliminated a great deal of their defenses already before she'd been taken down the first time. Still, she was battling for every hall, every room she passed through. Kenson's frantic orders and demands through the comm system were not helping matters.

When she saw the single guard outside a broom closet, of all things, she remembered the batarian boy they had brought along. Taking the guard out was easy, but when she opened the closet the sight that greeted her only furthered her fury.

Kelcik had visibly lost weight. His face seemed sunken, his skin ashen. His lips were dry and cracked, his eyes glazed. They hadn't bothered to give him any food or water since he'd been tossed into the tiny space, that much was clear. The furnace in her chest only stoked the hotter as she cursed and crouched down in front of him, taking his wrist and drawing it downward.

"Leave me alone," he mumbled miserably. "You did this…does it make you happy? Just let me die…"

"You're _not_ dying today," she told him in a low, urgent voice. "I'm not leaving you here, Kelcik. On your feet."

Not leaving the boy a choice she bodily hauled him up, steadying him. He was weak, sick. If nothing else, she had to find some water for him soon.

He was a civvie, he was a batarian…he was ill and disoriented and probably didn't even know how to fire a gun. He would do nothing but slow her down, but Shepard was not going to leave him to die. She already had the blood of two young boys on her hands, she was not adding a third.

Let Kenson and her indoctrinated coterie throw all the flames of hell at them…Shepard would burn herself before she let Kelcik fall.


	71. Chapter 71

Shepard's chest was burning miserably, and it felt vaguely like teeth were sinking into her side. Kenson's team had done a good job at patching her up but her wounds had clearly been severe…up and running and fighting two days later was probably not on the list of recommended recuperative activities. Also, her 'borrowed' hard-suit was for guard work, not front-line combat, and didn't have the on-board medical programs that administered medi-gel and painkillers as needed.

Still, Shepard was no stranger to pain and never one to let it stop her. To be honest, the shortness of air was the bigger nuisance. Having already suffered one lung-puncture fairly recently, a second had hardly done anything to improve matters. She felt like a goddamn asthmatic only partway through the station, and time seemed to be blowing away like sand between her fingers.

It didn't help that every single person in the station was fighting them, not _just_ the trained soldiers. Mechanics, engineers, even the goddamn cooks were shooting at her or trying to box her in. With each civvie that fell the self-hatred in her gut only tightened, but she had no choice. Trillions more would die very quickly if she failed, and these people had nothing to look forward to save death, or being mindless slaves to the Reapers.

Kelcik was doing his best to keep up, but he was also slowing her progress. She'd managed to find some bottled water which he'd guzzled swiftly enough to make himself ill, downing a second with a little more decorum. With hydration some of his strength had returned, which helped a little.

They managed to reach the main control room, and Shepard quickly accessed the Project's databases. Tired as he was physically, Kelcik's hostility had seemed only to gain strength. When he realized what she was doing, he grabbed her arm.

"I can't let you," he snarled. "I won't let you kill my people!"

Shoving the boy off of her, Del easily sent him sprawling to the ground. _"Don't_," she warned. "This Project has to be initialized. We have an hour now until the Reapers are here, and they'll mow your people down without hesitation!"

"Liar! They're not real! They don't exist!"

"I've _seen_ them, Kelcik!"

"And I'm supposed to _believe_ you? The bitch that shot all my co-workers at the jail to break out a terrorist? The Butcher who murdered fifty unarmed batarians on their knees?"

Her eyes narrowed in fury behind her face-plate. "Is that what you believe?" she demanded. "That I killed _fifty_ unarmed men on Torfan?"

"So what? There were fifteen? _Five_? How small a number does it have to be, before it's all right?" he snarled. Shepard blinked, then stiffened.

"Just…shut the fuck up and sit still," she growled. Turning back to the console, she began to activate the programs.

"Now you'll just add three hundred thousand more to the number," he noted bitterly. "Who cares, as long as they're batarians…they're not _your_ family, are they? They're just _animals_-"

"My girlfriend's sister and her bondmate are on that colony," Shepard retorted furiously.

"Oh, really?" he asked sarcastically, clearly not believing her. Shepard's teeth grit until she could hear them creak, and finished activating the program.

"_Project initialized,"_ the VI announced. _"Impact with Alpha relay in T minus 55 minutes. All personnel, to your evacuation points. All personnel, to evacuation points."_

"I hope you burn for eternity, for what you've done," Kelcik murmured, his voice thick. Ignoring him, Shepard pulled up the communications program and accessed the colony's main emergency grid. "Aratoht colony, start emergency evacuation procedures! This is Comm-"

The console suddenly hissed with static, making her hands snap back as the connection was lost. Kenson's frantic, furious image appeared in place of the VI.

"_Do you know what you've done? You'll ruin everything!"_

"Get off the goddamn line and free up the comm," Shepard raged. "I have to warn that colony! We can still save those people-"

"_No one can be saved, not now! I-I won't let you do this, Shepard! I'm activating the station's self-destruct…the asteroid will be destroyed before it can reach the relay. We will all die but the Reapers plan will still succeed!"_

"Kenson, stop and think about what you're doing!" Shepard urged desperately, even as the woman's image shimmered and vanished. _"Kenson!"_

The console had gone dead. Slamming her fists into it, Del thought frantically.

_I have to stop that self-destruct. There has to be a way, there has to be a comm tower I can reach to warn that colony. _

Turning she unceremoniously snagged the boy by his collar and hauled him to his feet. "We have to get moving if we're going to save your people."

"Just leave me here, let me die with them," he said, trying to pull away from her weakly. "I'm just a batarian, what do _you_ care-"

"_Look!_" Del whirled on him. "I haven't got time to fucking _argue_ with you! I don't want your people to die, and I don't want _you _to die. I'm trying to save a goddamn galaxy you little _shit_! If you've got a better plan then let's fucking hear it! If not, stop being deliberately stupid and open your fucking eyes! You're not dying on this rock if I have to carry your fucking annoying ass all the way to an escape pod, _**do you hear me**_**?"**

He blinked at her in shock, but didn't resist as she urged him forward. "Now _move it_ while there's still a colony left to save!"

* * *

><p>Del had always kept superb time in her head. It was an unconscious talent, one that normally served her well. She was a survivor, and survival sometimes depended on precise timing.<p>

Right now, that internal clock was spilling downward faster than she liked, an almost ominous weight ticking swiftly in her brain while everything else around her seemed to slow to molasses. Twice, she'd managed to activate a communications array. Twice, Kenson somehow managed to cut off the signal before she could get out a full warning to the colony.

It wasn't until the final time that Kelcik began to believe that Shepard might be telling the truth. He could not see her whole face behind her helmet, but the expression on the part he could see after the third time Kenson cut her off was so raw, so frantic, it gave him pause.

They managed to shut the self-destruct off, which only incited Kenson to more desperate measures. They chased her into the station's energy core itself, the wild-eyed woman now standing between them and the pulsing field of dark energy with a detonator in her hand. If she got close enough to it and depressed that trigger, they were all dead.

"Kenson, listen to me," Shepard warned. She had her sniper fixed on the woman's forehead. The only reason she hadn't taken the shot was because the woman's thumb was on the trigger of the detonator. She so much as twitched, and that thing would go off. While Kenson wasn't close enough yet to compromise the core, the explosion would still be less than…pleasant.

"You don't understand," Kenson wailed at her. Her iron gray hair was damp with sweat, her eyes darting, her cheeks both ashen and flushed. Del imagined Sydney someday looking like this, and her heart ached. "You'll _never_ understand! This _has_ to be done! The Reapers are not our enemy!"

"They want to _kill everyone_!"

"No! No, that's _not true_! You won't listen! You had your chance to join us, Iovino, but you won't _listen_! And now I will die, never having known the Reapers' blessings…and you will just _die_!"

"_Kenson!"_

She saw the woman's muscles bunch as she started to turn, ready to sprint at the core. Shepard snapped her finger down on the trigger and the iron gray hair seemed to split apart in a wash of blood, brain and bone. Kenson's feet tangled in each other and she fell forward, crashing to the ground. Shepard lowered her sniper, eyes catching on the detonator as it tumbled from Kenson's limp hand, rolling across the floor.

It was flashing.

Whirling, Shepard ran toward where a gaping Kelcik was watching from near an equipment bank. Grabbing hold of the boy she flung him to the ground, dropping over him even as the world lit up behind her.

She felt debris skip over her pads, felt the wash of heat, the push of concussion…but no new pain. After the ground stopped trembling and she realized they were still alive, she pushed herself up, taking hold of the boy.

"You ok?"

He coughed, blinking at her, then nodded weakly. She got to her feet, helping him to his.

"We've got fifteen minutes before we hit that relay," she told him. "Escape shuttles are outside as well as that last comm tower. There should be an atmo-suit at least outside the airlock…get suited up and let's get our asses in gear. If we can reach a shuttle or that comm tower in time maybe we can still save some of the colonists."

* * *

><p>The view outside was beyond spectacular. In the distance far to their right and slightly above, the planet Aratoht was a small ball of greens and golds, the crimson fringes of a distant nebula almost making it appear it had rings from this vantage. The rocky, uneven surface of the asteroid made ragged hills and mountains curving away from them, and beyond them the thick black of space alive with stars.<p>

Directly ahead, the mass relay was drawing swiftly and inexorably closer, the blue pulse of its core seeming to time the final moments till its death.

A scattering of the Project members was without, some driving Shepard and Kelcik back with almost half-hearted gunfire as the rest tried to make it aboard the remaining few shuttles. It wasn't the humans that served to be the problem in the end, but the heavy mech they had dragged onto the surface. By the time Shepard was able to disable it and clear it from their path, the last of the shuttles was departing, vanishing into the black, velvet eternity that surrounded them.

Reaching the comm tower, Shepard quickly accessed it. The countdown in her head had reached seven minutes.

_Eir, Shrive…all those people…_

Powering up and finding the proper channel she barked, "_Normandy_! This is Commander Shepard, I need immediate extraction! Fix on this signal, ma shang! _Normandy_, do you read?"

_{Commander, Miranda,}_ came the welcome reply. _{We're on our way.}_

"Open a communication with the Aratoht colony! See if you can't get anyone to evacuate! This asteroid is about to hit the mass relay and this entire system is going to go. Send out a general warning to all ships in solar orbit to leave the system immediately!"

_{Understood, Commander.}_

Immediately switching lines, Shepard accessed the colony system as well. "Aratoht colony, all citizens _evacuate immediately_! To any ship in range of this transmission, depart the system _now_! The mass relay is about to go supernova! I repeat, _evacuate the Bahak system immediately_!"

Kelcik, standing behind her, looked worriedly up toward the mass relay, so much closer now. He saw it spark twice, and his heart thudded in his throat. Two ships, at least, seemed to have heeded the warning and departed…but it was so few. Tears were hot in all four of his eyes, his chest aching.

He knew…all too well…that even if ships were to launch instantly from Aratoht, it would take them the better part of ten minutes at FTL to reach the relay. There simply was not enough time left.

_All those people…my family…_

Then something seemed to pulse a moment…not so much through the non-existent air, but through his very being. Shepard stepped back as a massive hologram appeared, floating overhead.

Kelcik had seen footage of the attack on the Citadel, of course. Anyone with any extra-net access had been inundated with it. He knew the geth army had been lead by a huge dreadnought they'd called Sovereign. This thing now hovering in shimmering light above looked identical to that ship.

When it spoke, the voice belonged to a God.

* * *

><p><strong>SHEPARD. YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT DELAY THE INEVITABLE.<strong>

Shepard knew that voice. Harbinger. She, as well as Miranda and Mordin, had assumed Harbinger was a Queen or some other hive mind belonging particularly to the Collectors. It seemed that wasn't so. She'd been talking to a Reaper the whole time.

The yellow outline of the beast reflected in her dark brown eyes as she growled. "Get used to it, because I'm going to do that a fuck of a lot, Harbinger."

**YOUR FIGHT IS FUTILE. THIS IS WHAT MUST BE. YOU WILL NOT STOP US.**

"Maybe, maybe not. What I guaran-fucking-tee that I _will_ do is fight you with every last drop of blood and sweat I have…and I won't be the only one. We will take every last one of you down if we have to."

**FOOLISH. WE WILL PREVAIL. WITH YOU, OR AGAINST YOU.**

"I can't wait to shove those words down your throat," she grinned ruthlessly, muscles knotting as she pointed at the image. "I will bring you _down_. You will pay for _every_ life that's been lost, for this _and_ every cycle that _ever _came before us. You tell your friends I'm coming for them. I don't care if there's a hundred, a thousand, or a goddamn _million_…_I'm coming for them_."

The image faded as the _Normandy_ suddenly appeared, flashing in the reflected light of a mass relay that now looked almost close enough to reach out and touch. Grabbing Kelcik's arm she pushed him in front of her, urging him to run, even as she saw the airlock slide open.

"Go! _Move!_"

Following the boy, she gripped his belt as they reached the lock and all but hefted him in before jumping in herself. "We're clear! Move!"

The lock slid closed, the ship turning and sailing for the relay. Hauling off her helmet, striding past Miranda as if she wasn't there, Shepard hurried over to Joker, gripping the back of his seat with one hand as his fingers flew over the controls.

The mass relay flared with fire, lashing out with dark energy and capturing the _Normandy_, whipping it into ultra-light speeds.

"Were you able to warn anyone?" she demanded.

"We sent out the warning but there was no official response. We did read two or three launches from the colony but only a couple of ships already in orbit made it through the relay," he told her. Turning, she jogged for the CIC, tossing her helmet aside as she did.

_Maybe Kenson was wrong. No one knows what happens when you destroy a relay, or even if they __**can**__ really be destroyed. Maybe it won't do anything. Maybe it will explode but not to the extent she had calculated._

Clinging to hope, Shepard reached the galaxy map. Time had already run out. They had made the relay with just seconds to spare, but it always took the map several moments to correlate real-time scan data into a cohesive image.

She could feel her hands trembling, and gripped the edge of the promontory railing as she watched the swirling stars. Then, a flash, centering in the Bahak system. The flash rippled outward, consuming Aratoht and its moon and slowly eating away the rest of the system before it faded. The map put up a flag that flashed, 'warning, critical cosmic event detected' over the site.

_Three hundred thousand_. The number echoed in her mind, drowning out even Kelcik's poor, ragged sobs.

She hung her head, her entire body feeling hollowed out.

"My God," Miranda murmured from somewhere close by. "All those people…"

Shepard grit her teeth, steeling herself as she straightened. Seeing the expression on her face, her XO shook her head. "It wasn't your fault, Commander. I know you. You would have done everything you could to stop it."

"No," Del murmured softly. "No. I was doing everything I could to ensure it happened."

Ignoring Miranda's shocked, disbelieving expression, Shepard stepped down off the promontory, gently gripping Kelcik's arm.

"Put us on course for the Citadel," she said distantly. "We'll be down in the infirmary."

* * *

><p>The rain clouds that had formed a dreary, heavy ceiling over the colony for the last week had finally broken up and lifted. Shrive stepped out of the prefab, turning her face up toward the sun with a smile, reveling in the warm rays for a long moment. The fresh, morning air was just crisp enough to fill one's lungs with energy.<p>

There had been so much worry lately, so much sadness and turmoil and disquietude…it was nice to have just a moment for life and peace, even if it was found in nothing more poignant than a lovely sunrise.

Lifting the tea in her hand, she sipped at it, motion drawing her eyes. She lifted a brow as she saw two of her neighbors bustling into the street. They seemed alarmed, and one of them pointed. Turning curiously, Shrive looked back up toward the sky just in time to see a brilliant, white flash of light flare through the azure, momentarily brighter than the sun.

Her hand lifted automatically to shield her eyes from the illumination, her brows knitting in confusion as she blinked.

_What could that have been?_ she thought. Behind her, her neighbors began screaming. Whirling, she dropped her tea, staring at the couple as they hugged each other, clinging and sobbing and dropping to their knees.

In the heartbeat before everything ended, Shrive had time for one last thought, a face appearing in front of her eyes for a moment.

_Eír…_

Then, everything ended.

* * *

><p>The throbbing, heavy bass was meant to drown everything out, to pound all thought and feeling from her head.<p>

So far, it wasn't working.

Shepard strode across the floor of the Nest, the crash bringing with it thin lances of pain as she slammed her hand into her small table, shattering the shot glass she carried into thick, biting shards. Remnants of whiskey burned at the cuts, brown mingling with pats of crimson as she then gripped the bottle and whirled.

The boom as it hit the wall of her quarters was like a mortar shot.

Three hundred thousand people.

_All my fault…I couldn't stop it. Why couldn't I stop it?_

Eir and Shrive. Liara's own sister.

_I couldn't save them. Their lives were in my hands and I failed…I killed them all._

Dropping into a sit on the floor, knees drawn up, Shepard looked at her hands. Thin pebbles of glass were still embedded in her skin, lazy slicks of blood tracing their way through the lines on her palm.

Blood. Blood on her hands. Her ears echoed with Kelcik's ragged sobs, his angry accusations.

"_Now you'll just add three hundred thousand more to the number. Who cares, as long as they're batarians…they're not __**your**__ family, are they? They're just __**animals**__-"_

She heard the door to the Nest slide open. She lowered her hands, ignoring the pats of blood that dripped over her trousers. "Go away, Kelly," she warned.

The redhead ignored her, of course, stepping down into the living space and going to her side. Crouching, she took Shepard's wrists gently to examine the damage, only to oof as the Commander shoved her away, landing her on her backside.

"I said _go away_!"

"I'm not going too," Kelly replied evenly, looking at her as she pushed herself back into a sit. "You may as well accept that."

Shepard said nothing, glaring at her floor. After a moment Kelly eased back over, and took her hand again. Silently, she began to pick the bits of glass out of the skin.

"Have you spoken with Liara?" she ventured after a moment.

"No," Del mumbled. "What would I say to her? I killed your sister and her bondmate? I murdered three hundred thousand helpless batarians?"

"She will hear of it soon herself, if she has not already," Kelly told her. "Does she deserve to learn of it over a news burst or the extra-net? Or should she hear it from you?"

Shepard growled, raking the fingers of her unwounded hand back through her hair, before pushing herself up to her feet.

"Let me be, Kelly," she said wearily. "Please just…just let me be."

"You are not a bad person, Shepard," Kelly said softly as she got to her feet. She lightly touched the commander's arm. "You fought hellfire to save your crew, to bring us back. I know that you did everything in your power to warn those batarians, to try and save as many as you could. This is too big a thing for someone to carry alone…even for someone like you. I will go…but _call_ _Liara._ She is going to need you as much as you are going to need her."

Shepard said nothing, and after a moment, Kelly slipped out again. Going over to her desk, Shepard slapped the control for her computer with the heel of her hand, cutting off the music with a blaring jolt.

Her messages were flashing at her. Her aching eyes landed on one from Hackett, and she reluctantly selected it.

Text only, it read:

_Received report. Will speak to you in person at Citadel. Will board when you dock. _

_Adm. Steven Hackett._

Hanging her head, her dark hair in muddled curtains around her face, Shepard took a deep breath. Ignoring the other messages she opened a private comm channel, and called Liara.

A few moments later, the call flashed as accepted. She transferred it to the room's holographic projector and the asari appeared on the lower floor of the Nest. She turned as Shepard came down the steps, puzzled confusion turning into alarm.

"Shepard, your head-!"

Self-consciously, Del reached up and touched the naked line along the side of her skull, where the bullet had grazed her. Dr. Chakwas had examined all her wounds and declared them adequately treated if not yet sufficiently healed. A few steroid-inhalant treatments had helped to ease her wounded lung and speed up healing.

The wound on her head would scar, of course. Helen told her that the follicles within it were damaged but not irreparably so. She was able to stimulate them for hair re-growth…which would take a week or two, but the hair that grew back in would likely be off-color, possibly even white.

Dropping her fingers, she shook her head. "How…your evacuation – I…shouldn't have called," she mumbled, and started to turn away. Though she could not actually touch her, Liara moved forward after the human, one hand extended.

"No, Shepard, please…what's happened? The evacuation of the Broker base is going well and we are on the cusp of departing. I can spare a few moments. Are you not at the Citadel?"

Shepard halted, then took a deep breath, her shoulders squaring. Looking back at her love, she said, "I can't tell you everything that's happened, Liara," she said softly. "You are a very good information Broker and…I know that whatever I say or don't say, you will eventually discover the whole story but…"

She broke off helplessly. Seeing only concern and love on the other asari's face wounded Shepard's heart more than she could say. Her brown eyes shifted a little.

"Is…is Wilcher or Ori there with you? Feron, or Garrus…_someone_?"

"I am alone in the room for now," Liara told her.

"Someone needs to be there with you. Call someone to be there with you."

"Why?" Liara asked, alarm now spreading on her features. "Shepard-"

"Liara, just…get someone in the room with you, now, ok?"

Stiffening, the asari nodded, touching a nearby console that was invisible to Del. "Ori, could you please come here a moment?" she asked. As she looked back at Shepard, Del was unable to meet her gaze.

Only moments later, the redhead appeared, materializing across the bedroom floor.

"What is it, Liara?"

"Shepard has something to tell me and thought it proper I was not alone," Liara told her, then looked at her love. "Del…?"

The human Commander straightened again, every trace of emotion seeming to vanish off her face under a coat of stoicism and resolve.

"The _Normandy_ was called to a mission in batarian space," she said evenly. "I was given evidence of an imminent Reaper arrival in the system. I was not able to prevent them entering the system but I was able to delay their entry into the rest of the galaxy by destroying the local mass relay."

"You destroyed a mass relay?" Liara asked, surprised. "I did not think that was possible."

"Apparently it is if you drive a big enough asteroid into one," Shepard said tightly.

Slim blue brows knit. "The energy released from such a collision must have been astronomical-"

"The same as released with a supernova," Shepard replied. "Yes. The entire system was destroyed. The _Normandy_ barely made it out in time."

Blue eyes searched her face. "Shepard…?"

"Liara, it was the Bahak system," Shepard said. "Aratoht is gone."

Liara blinked, then slowly her face transformed from confusion into horrified shock. "No…" she whispered.

Shepard clasped her hands behind her back tightly. "I did my best to warn the colony, to effect an evacuation but events…I failed, Liara. The long and short of it is, I failed. I wasn't able to save them, to warn them in time."

The look on her love's face was like sending a dagger straight through her heart. Liara's struggle to maintain her composure was obvious, but her eyes were welling with tears that could not be halted. As they started to fall, Ori stepped up and gently took her arm. Liara sucked in a sob, lifting her chin.

"Eír and Shrive…?" she whispered. Shepard said nothing. She couldn't trust her voice enough to say anything. Liara's face fell and she lowered her head, covering her mouth. Ori put her arm around her, then looked at Shepard.

"How many people were on that colony?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"Three hundred thousand," Del replied roughly. The redhead looked stricken. Liara looked simply devastated. Shepard wanted nothing more than to hold her, to beg her forgiveness…but she couldn't.

After a moment, Liara composed herself enough to speak again, lowering her hand. "What happens now?"

"We're en route to the Citadel," Shepard told her. "From there the plan remains the same. I surrender myself and the _Normandy_ to Anderson."

"Del, do _not_ spare me," Liara said heatedly, her eyes still damp. Her lower lip trembled, further breaking Shepard's heart. "You know _exactly_ what I am asking!"

"My arrest won't just be a formality anymore," Shepard admitted. "The batarians are not going to understand why this happened. They'll consider it an act of terrorism, of war. I will likely be escorted back to Earth, tried and convicted as a war criminal. I will probably be thrown to the dogs in an effort to stave off a horrific war with the batarians that we can't afford right now. Most likely I'll be dishonorably discharged and sent to a hard-labor internment camp for the rest of my life. If that doesn't appease the batarians it is possible I will be executed."

Liara moaned faintly, covering her mouth again momentarily, before she shook her head. "I will not allow that to happen. Anderson, and Hackett…they won't-"

"They may not have a choice, Tianlán!" Del said sternly. "They have to live by the law just as everyone else. They can only bend it so far, and if it comes down to me or a war with the batarians while the Reapers are knocking on our door…then they are _not_ going to hesitate in making the right call."

"Then _I_ will do something about it," Liara said furiously. "I have contacts, friends-"

"You aren't going to do _anything_, Liara, besides finish scuttling that ship and getting yourself somewhere _safe_," Shepard ordered.

"I will not stand by and-"

"What are you going to do? Take on the entire Alliance?" Shepard was getting heated. Anger had always been easier for her than grief and misery. The stricken expression in the asari's eyes, however, quickly deflated her. She sagged. "Liara…just…I'm just so sorry for everything I've put you through. I tried to warn them, I swear…I tried to save her…"

"Del, I know you did everything in your power," Liara told her. "You are always trying so hard to save everyone else. Please…let me save _you_."

"Don't…" she sighed, sagging a bit more. "Just…try not to worry for now, ok? That's all worst-case scenario. I've got the Fleet Master on my side, the human Councilor, a well respected Admiral…I stopped the Collectors, I stopped the Saren and the geth…that's got to count for _something_. It won't be easy or smart for them to hang me too high. We just…we just have to see what happens."

Stepping away from Ori, Liara drew closer. Shepard could see the shimmer of moisture on her cheeks, and felt her own eyes heating. "It just does not seem fair, does it?" Liara murmured softly. "You do all that you can and still…"

"Yeah," Del replied quietly. "Please be safe, Liara. I'm…I'm so sorry about Eír."

"I pray she has found her peace," Liara whispered sadly. Then her eyes met Del's and steeled a little. "I will be following the news bursts as closely as I can, Shepard. Do what you must, but understand this. They will _not_ take you from me."

Her lashes dipped, another tear tracing down her face before she turned, striding away. Ori glanced at Shepard, inclining her head a little. "I'll keep an eye on her," she promised. "Commander…good luck."

Del nodded faintly, watching the small redhead scurry after the asari before the holographic feed faded away.

* * *

><p>They dropped Legion on an uninhabited moon per its request. It reassured Shepard that its people would be able to retrieve it, but felt it best that it went nowhere near the Citadel. Shepard could only agree.<p>

Outside the airlock, just before it departed, she once again shook its hand. "We could not have made it without you," she told it solemnly. "You got those doors opened, and you saved Kasumi's life."

"We were glad to be of service, Shepard-Commander."

"And we were glad to have you, Legion," she replied, lifting her hand and saluting. The geth's flaps shifted a little in surprise, before it lifted its hand as well, and returned the salute, before disappearing into the airlock.

The others took their leave when they finally docked at the Citadel. True to his word, Anderson gave them an hour to allow those that wished to discretely disperse. Thane, Jack, Samara, Zaeed and Jacob each bid her their farewells before departing, fading into various parts of the crowd. Though she had grown to like and respect them all, a few were harder to watch walk away than others. Kasumi, for instance.

"I'm not gonna cry," the thief vowed to herself, before taking a deep breath and grasping Shepard's arms. "You are the biggest bad-assiest hero I know, Shep. Don't ever stop doing what you do."

"I…don't think 'bad-assiest' is actually a word, Kasumi," Shepard smiled. The thief winked.

"You made it a word just by being you. It's the only one that fits. I mean it…take care of yourself. I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you too, Kas," Del admitted. "Don't steal anything that ends up getting you shot, ok?"

"Hey, I never got shot before I joined up with you and your crazy suicide mission," she protested. "I'm just going to stick to nice, safe kleptomania and leave you to all the explosions."

Gathering her things, she gave Del one last hug before turning and literally vanishing, fading into thin air before she'd gotten halfway across the ramp.

Miranda left with Mordin, the pair escorting Deirdre and the shackled Sydney off ship. They were only going two slips over, to a hired vessel that would take them to Sur'Kesh. Miranda had decided she was going to at least see them settled there before disappearing. She wouldn't even tell Del what her plans were, insisting it was safer if Shepard didn't know.

The normally collected XO actually teared up as she gave Shepard an abrupt, brief hug…almost seeming embarrassed by it the moment it happened. Shepard didn't let her off that easy, drawing her back in and hugging her tightly.

"Watch yourself," Miranda murmured. "Cerberus is nothing if not persistent."

"Goes for you too, Lawson," Shepard told her, finally releasing her. "It was an honor to work with you."

The Australian inclined her head before she turned and joined the others. Shepard met Sydney's eyes a moment, the blonde nodding slightly before Deirdre lightly touched her arm and guided her along with Mordin and Miranda.

"This is stupid," a voice rumbled behind her as the group vanished. "I should go with you to Earth."

"Grunt," Del smirked, looking affectionately at the boy. "You belong on Tuchanka and you know it. Besides, Earth is boring. Everyone there is soft and pathetic and no one can head-butt right."

He huffed. "You can."

"I'm an aberration. Kind of like you, but less ugly."

He rumbled a laugh. "Yeah, well…you know if you need me, just call. I will always come, battle master."

"I know you will, Grunt," she replied. "Right now, though, Wrex needs your plates on Tuchanka. So get moving, boy, before I have to slam some sense into you."

He snorted, then bobbed his head. As he strode away, shifting his pack on his shoulders, Del felt her aching eyes heat all over again.

"I'm going to miss you, big guy," she murmured softly.

Taking a deep breath, she strode back into the _Normandy_. Though not everyone had gone, the ship felt hugely empty, vastly lonely.

Joker was one who had chosen to remain. Even knowing he'd likely be arrested too, he was set in his decision. Chakwas, unsurprisingly, remained on board as well, as did Gabriella and Kenneth, and a handful of the rest of the crew. As she headed toward the CIC, Del saw Helen waiting for her, and nodded.

"Doctor?"

"Commander," Chakwas smiled faintly. "So…this is it. Hackett will be here soon and we'll be heading back to Earth. I don't know if they'll give us much of a chance to talk to each other before then so…I just wanted to say…I'm going to miss patching you up."

"Well, I'm _not_ going to miss getting shot," Shepard replied with weak amusement. "Are you sure you don't want to go, Helen? It's not too late…"

"And be a fugitive?" she shook her head. "No. I'm not cut out to be a fugitive, and I do not hide from the consequences of my decisions, Shepard. I'm not worried."

"Commander, Admiral Hackett is boarding," EDI stated. Shepard nodded, glancing at the blue orb even as she turned.

"VI, EDI."

"Of course, Commander."

Shepard drew to attention as Hackett crossed toward the CIC. He seemed to have aged some, but otherwise was as collected and straight-laced as always. She saluted, and he returned it.

"Doctor, if you'll excuse us," he said, eyes shifted over to Helen. She nodded and stepped past, lightly touching Del's arm as she did, before heading up to the helm.

"Shepard, do you want to tell me what the hell happened?" he asked the moment the older woman was out of hearing range. "I sent you in for a simple rescue and the next thing I know relays are exploding and an entire batarian system is wiped out."

"Have you read my report, sir?" she asked.

"I don't want to read the report, I want to hear it from _you_," he replied. "What _happened_?"

Never relaxing further than parade rest, Shepard related the events as dispassionately as possible. She told him of Kenson's behavior, of discovering Object Rho out in the open, and what had happened. She told him of her attempts to warn the colony and Kenson's constant efforts to thwart her. She told him of Kelcik and her wounds and Harbinger's appearance. When she finally fell silent, Hackett looked grim, and far from happy.

"You are positive this artifact was of Reaper origin," he asked at last. "You really thought the Reapers were an imminent threat?"

"Yes, sir," she replied without hesitation.

"And this batarian boy. He is still on board?"

"He is. He recovered his strength thanks to Dr. Chakwas but declined arrangements to send him back to batarian space."

"I want to speak to this boy."

"I understand, but that will be his decision, sir. He is down on the lower levels at the moment."

Hackett hmmed under his breath, then nodded. "I don't have to tell you how bad this is, Shepard. The batarians are going to be howling for blood, and we cannot risk war with them if the Reapers are on the verge of full-scale invasion."

"I understand, sir, and I will accept any consequences for my actions."

"Good to see your sense of honor is still intact," he mused, then straightened with a nod. "Councilor Anderson and the relief crew are waiting deck-side. We may as well get this done."

"Yes, sir," she agreed. "And…sir?"

Hackett paused, looking at her. She lifted her chin slightly, her voice softening. "I'm so sorry, sir…about Dr. Kenson."

"She was a good woman," he agreed. "A good friend. However if she was indoctrinated, you made the right call. I can't imagine she'd knowingly choose that over her own free will, given the option. You probably did her a service."

Shepard lowered her head a little, and he reached out, taking her shoulder. "All right. Come on."

* * *

><p>As Shepard strode off the <em>Normandy<em> with Hackett at her shoulder, a solemn crowd was waiting for her at the end of the dock. Anderson stood, his face a mask, his shoulders square. Several other Alliance personnel in full uniform waited with him – the crew that would pilot _Normandy_ back to Earth. There was also a visibly armed escort, and one face she had not expected to see.

Ashley Williams looked just as stoic and blank as Anderson did, standing at parade rest with one hand resting on the butt of a pistol on her hip. As Shepard neared the group she drew to a halt, drawing herself up with a snap, casting a perfect salute.

"Commander Delilah Shepard," Anderson rumbled, returning the salute.

"Councilor Anderson," she replied. "I hereby surrender both my person and the _Normandy_ into your possession. I submit myself to the Alliance and any justice it seems fit to administer."

"Accepted, Commander," Anderson replied, dropping the salute. "Crew, you may take possession."

Most of the group moved past, up the ramp and into the ship. Clearing his throat, Anderson waited until they'd gone before continuing. "Commander, you are hereby stripped of your rank and are under arrest pending charges of desertion, terrorist association, and malicious acts of war…namely, the destruction of a mass relay resulting in over three hundred thousand batarian casualties. You will be granted all rights of an Alliance prisoner under Code 345-2, including right to free counsel. You will be returned to Earth and held in a detention facility pending psychological evaluation and dispensation."

He gestured with a nod, and Williams came forward, removing a set of bind-cuffs from her belt as she moved up behind Del, drawing her arms back and snapping the restraints on her wrists.

"Sorry about this, Skipper…" she murmured softly as she fastened the bindings. Shepard said nothing.

"Williams, escort Shepard onto the _Normandy_ and secure her in the brig," Anderson ordered. "You are in command of the ship until its return to Earth."

"Yes, sir." She saluted, then gave Del's arm a gentle tug. Turning, Shepard allowed herself to be led back to the _Normandy_.

For good, or for ill…she was finally going home.


	72. Chapter 72

A/N: Surprise! Sorry it's slightly short, but I figured you guys probably wouldn't mind.

* * *

><p>Bright green eyes focused on the thin lengths of metal draped in the asari's hands. Thug rubbed his fingers over his lips, and snorted.<p>

"This little thing sucks away your biotics?" he asked.

"I have to sleep in it," Eír agreed. "Otherwise the nightmares might cause me to hurt Shrive."

"Shrive's tough. She grew up with krogan," he dismissed. "She can take a biotic hit or two."

"This is not just a biotic 'hit or two'," she told him. "I could _kill _her, Thug."

He scowled, then shook his head. "Maybe. You said this doctor would be able to help you?"

"Yes," Eír agreed, gathering the thin cinch and sliding it back into her pouch. "He contacted me yesterday. He is finally done with his mission and on his way home to Sur'Kesh. He wants to make arrangements for Shrive and I to go there in the next day or two, to begin treatment."

"Good," Thug agreed, ducking his head a little as they passed through the small airlock into Shrive's tiny ship. "A warrior should kill by their own choice, not mindless compulsion."

"Your new brothers taught you this?" she asked with a faint smile, an expression which only grew a little when he straightened indignantly.

"It is what every krogan knows."

"Yes, well. We should be back home within a day. Shrive was looking forward to seeing you again. I think she misses Tuchanka."

"I'm surprised she didn't come with you."

"She has work she could not beg out of," Eír replied, moving into the helm and slipping into the pilot's seat. "We thought a small trip to Omega to pick you up might help me clear my mind."

Dropping his duffle in a corner, Thug loomed in the door of the helm…a big, gruff, comfortable shadow that she just now realized she had missed more than she thought.

"Well, let's get going then," he urged. "Let's see this soft little world you picked for yourself."

"Not every world that is not Tuchanka is soft," she protested, even as she accessed her comm. "Omega dock, this is _PV Ariesti_ mark 23.4, requesting departure from slip C-14."

_{Acknowledged, Ariesti. Please state destination.}_

Eír blinked, her lavender eyes confused. "Destination? They have not asked that before…why would they care our destination?"

Thug only shrugged. Eír depressed the control again. "Omega dock, I do not understand why you need our destination?"

_{There has been a major event that compromised the Alpha relay and wiped out a system. If your destination takes you through or links to this relay you will be unable to access it. We are warning all ships that intend to link-}_

A distant voice seemed to speak through her own lips, a black hole starting in her stomach. "Did…did you say the Alpha relay?"

_{Affirmative. It and the entire Bahak system have been obliterated.}_

Eír gripped the back of the pilot's chair, even as she got to her feet. She nearly stumbled stepping out from behind the helm, activating her omni-tool and selecting a number. Thug, grim-faced, stepped aside as she moved into the small crew compartment.

She pinged a number, paused, then pinged it again. Tears, unnoticed, began to shimmer in her eyes.

"Answer," she urged softly, frantically. "Shrive…Shrive_, answer_!"

Her omni-tool remained silent.

Thug went to one wall, linking a terminal into the extra-net feeds. In a heartbeat, the monitor was displaying six different news bursts…all of which seemed to be reporting on the destruction of the relay. Selecting TNN, he drew it forward to dominate the feed.

"…_military has just confirmed, Commander Delilah Shepard __**has **__been arrested and is being escorted to a classified location. Neither the Batarian Hegemony nor the Alliance has yet to release an official statement but it is clear…the Alpha relay in the batarian system of Bahak __**has**__ been destroyed. The explosion has wiped out the entire system, including the batarian colony of Aratoht, home to over three hundred thousand souls. Most of the information we have at this time has not been verified and we have no confirmation on how such destruction happened, however it seems the event or events that occurred to cause the relay's overload were, in fact, set in motion by Commander Shepard. The news of the first human Spectre's involvement only comes as a secondary shock in the wake of the news that rumors of the last six months are true: Shepard is still alive, and may have been undercover in the Terminus systems for the last two years."_

The reporter droned on, but the krogan was distracted by his sister. Still attempting to contact Shrive, she was all but screaming into her omni-tool, demanding Shrive pick up. As Thug neared, reaching his hand out and touching her shoulder, she suddenly flared with biotics, sending the boy crashing across the room.

"**No!"**

Rolling to his feet, the young krogan returned to her side without hesitation, gripping hold of her again. This time, she seemed to deflate, sagging to her knees as Thug caught her, grabbing hold of him desperately even as the first wail tore from her throat.

Were he any other race, her hold on him would have been painful, her fingers digging into the thick folds of his neck as she sobbed and raged. In a heartbeat grief turned to anger again, and she slammed her fists over and over into his shoulders, making incoherent sounds of raw emotion.

Sitting back on the floor as she slumped again in exhaustion, he hauled her into his lap and let her cling, a big arm wrapped around her shoulders.

"_She_ did this," were the first real words to escape her lips in several minutes, her voice so strained with grief and hatred she did not even sound like herself any more. "Mother was right, Thug…Mother was right…"

Her words turned into a low moan of pure pain as she gasped. "Shrive…oh, Goddess…please no…_please…"_

* * *

><p>There were no news crews, of course. Being as this was a secure, government facility the hounds were unable to get within a thousand feet of it. As the airlock opened, Shepard could smell the fresh, crisp salt air…feel the warmth of Sol in the bright blue sky above.<p>

They had not taken her back to New York. Ashley had seemed distant, disinclined to speak to the Commander, and for the most part, Shepard was left alone with her thoughts in the brig, her only company a silent guard that had not been part of her crew.

Williams had stirred herself enough once, however, to go down and speak to her, albeit briefly. She had informed Del they were not taking her back to New York, but rather to the base in Vancouver, Washington.

Shepard thought idly that she had never before been to Washington state.

Her boots landed on tarmac, her hands cuffed behind her. Ashley was holding her right arm, an armed private standing close to her left. Shepard ignored them, looking at the distant mountains and fir trees through the clean white buildings of the city.

Del was no longer in her civvies. On Ash's lone visit, she had brought the commander a uniform. It felt strange to put the Alliance blues on again, just as strange as it felt to set foot on Earth once again.

The approach of boot-steps drew her attention and she drew up to her full height as her eyes moved from landscape to the group of soldiers approaching.

She was transferred into their custody, brought inside. The halls within were just as clean and white as the buildings without. Her mind was distant as she was processed, searched, cleared and taken into a small room with a low desk and a pair of chairs. Her bind-cuffs were loosened and then fastened to the desk, and she was left to sit for several minutes before the door opened again.

Two men entered. One wore the uniform of an Alliance Admiral and seemed at least a decade younger than Anderson. He had a set, but open face. She had never met him but she knew who he was: Rear-Admiral Perri, in command of the facility.

The second man was dressed in civvies. Heavily balding, wearing actual spectacles, he and his family had clearly not opted for gene therapy to correct the issues. In this day and age, on Earth rather than in a colony, that was almost like waving a sign that he was Liberationalist. The group, a quasi-religious sect, didn't hold to unnecessary therapies or genetic alterations.

He wore a neatly trimmed goatee and had the type of face that seemed to always be on the verge of smiling.

"Commander Shepard, I am Rear-Admiral Ekkin Perri, and this is our Chief Psychiatrist Hadar Wyatt. He will be conducting your psychological evaluation. I trust your journey to Bonneville was pleasant enough."

"Yes, sir, all things considering," she replied.

"We have an advocate on the way-"

As if on cue, the door opened again and another soldier strode through, saluting sharply. "Sir."

"Ah, here she is now. Commander Shepard, this is JAG officer Caroline Ferrel. She will be your legal counsel."

"Good to meet you, Commander," the woman replied with a polite nod. "Shall we begin?"

This round of questioning was only preliminary…she would face far more grueling, in depth scrutiny of every aspect of her activities since the original _Normandy_ exploded until the moment she set foot in Vancouver, but that would wait until later. Alliance law dictated that she get at least twenty-four hours, any needed medical attention, and her full evaluation by a qualified psychologist before being submitted to any hard debrief.

Ferrel, at least, seemed to have a good head on her shoulders, and Perri seemed to be of a somewhat sympathetic mind, if slightly more reserved than Anderson. As for Wyatt, he only stood in the corner and listened. They were in that room an hour, and Del didn't hear a single word come out of the man's mouth the entire time.

She outlined her whole story, from waking up at the Cerberus base to the occurrences at the Bahak system. Perri seemed to want to continue, but Ferrel reminded him he had to wait until after her examinations before true questioning could begin, and the Rear-Admiral conceded. Shepard was escorted to a detention room. Ferrel remained with her for yet another hour, covering their options and reassuring her as best as she was able, before she departed.

_Well, it's better than a goddamn cell,_ Del thought wearily. The room, incredibly secure and lousy with surveillance, was still rather larger and more comfortable than she'd been expecting. No console, of course. Her omni-tool had been confiscated. She did, however, have a window.

Moving over to the reinforced glass, she looked out onto the beautiful afternoon. The view overlooked the sprawling complex…only part of which was the detention center. Just past the lines of the complex she could see the harbor, the blue ocean waters shimmering with hints of gold from the sun. Seagulls danced and called, and the snowy mountains were wreathed in mist.

Vaguely, she could see her own reflection in the glass. Her hair had started to grow back in over the scar on the side of her head…not white but silver gray. She fingered the small locks idly.

_How did it come to this? Alliance marine, first human Spectre…now a prisoner, a war criminal, a __**murderer**__? _

She leaned her forehead on the cool glass a moment, her eyes closing. Weariness left the door open for grief, and she could feel the tears pricking at the back of her eyelids. Nan was gone. Liara was on the run. Her friends were all scattered to the winds, thousands of light-years away. She had sowed nothing but pain and grief over the last six months, ever since opening her eyes at that damn project.

Opening her eyes as she straightened, she suddenly froze. For a moment, her eyes fixed to the reflection of the asari standing just behind her, a slim blue hand resting lightly on Del's shoulder.

Just as fast as it seemed to appear, however, it was gone again…nothing but her own imagination and a trick of the light reflection through the glass.

Lowering her head, she stepped away from the window and moved over to the bed, sitting down and covering her face with her hands.

* * *

><p>"We have Cerberus ships in solar orbit," Wilcher warned as he strode across the docking bay. The last of the equipment and provisions were being loaded onto the final shuttle, Liara directing their movements. The poor asari woman looked like she hadn't slept in days. "Liara, we have to go <em>now<em>."

"Get the last people aboard the shuttle," she urged. "How many ships are we picking up?"

"Twelve," he said. "Most small frigates but one's a monster. The _Styx_ can't outgun it but if we go now we can make a run and hit the relay before they can react."

"I just have one more thing to do," she told him, already striding toward the control room.

"Hey, we have no time!" he protested.

"I know! Get these people on the shuttle! I will be there momentarily!"

She vanished from view, and he cursed before helping to load the final shuttle and hurrying the last of Thanatos aboard. Just as the engines were powering up, Liara reappeared, running toward them. She darted onto the shuttle, panting, and Wilcher hauled the door shut.

"Move it!" he shouted to the pilot, who immediately lifted off. Looking at Liara, the gentle giant asked, "What was that about?"

"A surprise for that big ship," she said. "I reprogrammed the guidance system on the base to use _it_ as a homing point. If that ship comes anywhere near it-"

"It will kick up the engines and try and rendezvous…spectacularly," Wilcher blinked, then grinned. "I knew I liked you, Blue."

"Thank you. Now we just have to get out of here. Hopefully it will be enough of a distraction for the _Styx _to make a clean getaway."

They docked a few minutes later, Wilcher rushing up to the helm with Liara on his heels, already barking orders. The pilot was already turning the ship but they could see the Cerberus frigates closing in, the heavy cruiser sinking toward Hagalaz.

Then like a whale surfacing from the deep, the Broker ship appeared through the storm. The frigates, clearly thinking the bulky ship was trying to make a run for it, refocused on it, diverting away from the smaller _Styx_. A few lashed shots at it while it lumbered inexorably toward their heavy.

The cruiser tried to compensate but it was too late…the two enormous vehicles collided with horrible force, the twisted wreck falling back into the planet below.

Wilcher let out a whoop, hugging the asari tightly and hauling her off her feet a moment, before setting her down again and pointing at his pilot. "Get us through that goddamn relay before the frigates can regroup, and get us the fuck out of here!"

* * *

><p>Dr. Wyatt looked up as the escort entered, Shepard between them. Rising, he strode over and accepted the data pad from one, signing it before passing it back. "Thank you, gentlemen. I can take it from here."<p>

As the two guards departed, he lightly touched Del's arm, directing her to sit at a nearby desk. The chair was bolted to the floor, and he attached a fasten from the chair to the bind-cuffs she still wore. "I am sorry about the restraints. After the results of my evaluation there should be no more need of them…you will simply be required to have an armed escort around the secure areas of the facility."

"Better safe than sorry I guess, right Doc?"

"As you say," he replied affably.

Making sure she was secure, he straightened. "You have been through many of these evaluations before, I see," he told her, gesturing to the records lying on his desk. "You have…_some_ borderline concerns but nothing that would keep you out of service. It is my understanding however that your PTSD has displayed new symptoms and you are now on…to use the vernacular…little greens?"

"That is correct," Shepard told him. His pale blue eyes smiled as he sat on the edge of his desk, regarding her.

"Nothing to be concerned about. Every other soldier out there is on little greens, Perri included. You are a smart, capable woman, Commander. You understand the need for these evaluations…for the steps the Alliance is taking regarding you and what happened in batarian space?"

"I am aware."

His smile reached his lips and he nodded. "Good. I do have to say, I have been following your career quite closely the last few years. You are…_well_. You are an amazing example, not only of an Alliance soldier but also of a human being. To endure such traumas in both your past and in service and yet maintain your sanity…not an easy feat."

Her dark eyes watched him warily, but she said nothing in response. Almost eagerly he clasped his hands. "Oh, did you hear the news? Councilor Anderson is resigning his post. I understand he is a good friend of yours."

This surprised her. She blinked. "Anderson is stepping down from the Council?"

"Yes. He and Fleet Master Barrett are taking the concerns of this Reaper fleet now in batarian space very seriously. He feels he can be more use helping to secure our defenses here. In fact, he _should_ be on base sometime in the next day or two. Ambassador Udina will be stepping up to take his place on the Council."

"Of course he will be," she grumped, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice.

"You…dislike Ambassador Udina?"

"We don't always see eye-to-eye."

"Ah, I understand." He rose, walking around his desk. "Donnell Udina and I have worked together before. He can be a bit…hard to take sometimes, hmm?"

He sat behind the desk, clasping his hands in front of her, his expression warm and happy. "Now then…shall we get started?"

* * *

><p>"Council…forgive me, <em>Admiral<em> Anderson," Perri greeted, saluting the higher ranking man as he strode into the facility. As Anderson returned the salute, Perri smiled at his companion. "I see your little side-trip was fruitful."

"Indeed," Anderson replied.

"It is nice to meet you, Admiral Perri," the woman greeted.

"Rear-Admiral, please. I'm not yet _quite_ as important as Anderson," he laughed, taking a soft hand and squeezing it lightly. Anderson snorted, continuing forward as Perri fell into step beside him.

"How is she?" he asked.

"She's only had a preliminary debrief, but she seems very cooperative so far. I believe she's in for her psychological evaluation right at the moment. It shouldn't be too long."

"As you can imagine, we're a bit eager to see her," Anderson said.

"I certainly can. The moment she's out we can-"

"Sir!" An out of breath private suddenly ran up, tossing off a shaky salute. "Sir, we have a Code Four situation in Dr. Wyatt's offices!"

"What?" Both Perri and Anderson blurted the word at the same time, before they broke into a run, leaving the civilian to follow. She jogged after them, alarm filling her eyes.

Four armed guards stood gathered outside the door to Wyatt's office, the lieutenant in charge saluting the two admirals as they ran up. Against the far wall, a dazed and bleeding Wyatt was sitting. He struggled to his feet.

"Status?" Anderson barked.

"She's gone loco, sir!" the lieutenant told him.

"She's had a complete psychotic break," Wyatt stammered. "Turned violent. She could have killed me."

"That's not possible!" Anderson gaped.

"She's holed up inside," the lieutenant informed him.

"Armed?" Perri demanded.

"Not conventionally-"

"Shepard doesn't _need_ to be conventionally armed to take out a whole platoon," Anderson growled. "She could do it with a stapler and an office chair if she were pressed hard enough."

"Permission to go in firing, sir?"

"_Permission denied_!" Anderson roared before Perri could even speak. "Take cover. I want that door opened. I'm going to try and talk to her."

The men cleared to either side of the portal before the lieutenant reached out and tapped the release. The moment the doors slid open, a data pad whipped out of them like a missile, all but shattering on the far wall.

"You see?" the lieutenant gasped. "Loco!"

"Commander Shepard!" Anderson barked from beside the door. "Stand down!"

All that answered him was an incomprehensible scream, an almost primal sound of both terror and fury that rang right up his spine. The office chair whipped through the air, crashing to the ground.

"Jesus," he murmured, then barked again. "Commander Shepard! This is Admiral Anderson! You _will_ stand down! That's an order, soldier!"

"Leave me alone!" came the reply, almost painful in its desperation. "_LEAVE ME ALONE_! Go away and _leave me alone_!"

"What the fuck happened?" he demanded, looking at Wyatt.

"We were just talking!" he insisted. "She seemed fine, stable, and then she just…"

He gestured with a frantic, shaking hand at the door, as if in demonstration.

"What did you ask her? Right before this happened, what did you ask her?"

"I asked her if she was still smoking, that's it!" Wyatt gaped back. "It's in her records, I just asked if she was still smoking and the next thing I know she's out of her cuffs and slamming a paperweight into my head!"

Within the room, they could hear ragged sobs and gasps, a sound he never in a million years would have associated with Del Shepard. He looked back toward the door, only to feel his arm taken.

"Let me try and speak to her."

"No, it's too dangerous-"

"She _trusts_ me, Admiral. Please…before something happens that everyone regrets. Let me go and speak to her. I am not afraid of her."

Jaw clenching, he looked at her, then the door, then finally nodded. "All right, we'll give it a shot. Men, hold your positions. No one make a move until I give the order."

"Shepard?" she called, Anderson shifting so she could take his place beside the door. "Shepard, can you hear me?"

Sobs and faint moans were the response.

"Shepard, I am coming in."

* * *

><p>The office was large, and not all warm and homey. Some medical equipment lined the far wall, most of which had been torn away and scattered across the floor. The desk, old-fashioned wood, was tipped to its side. Data pads and papers were spilled everywhere.<p>

A couch, a pair of overstuffed chairs, various knickknacks, were tossed madly around the room, like a whirlwind had torn through.

Jammed in the corner, secure behind the desk, sat Commander Delilah Shepard. She could not be seen, not just yet…but the grit-toothed sobs made her location obvious.

She reached the middle of the floor, moving slowly. So far, nothing had been flung her way. As far as she could tell, Shepard had not moved.

"Shepard," she tried again, keeping her voice soft and gentle. "Shepard, I am here. What has happened? What is wrong?"

The moans actually grew louder a moment. "No…no you're _not_," came the weak reply.

"I _am_ here," she insisted. "Shepard, _talk_ to me…"

A sniffle, a shuddering breath. Slowly, Shepard peered around the edge of the desk.

Her face was flushed, her eyes reddened. Her hair hung in limp, sweat-damp tendrils over her cheeks. Her dark brown eyes were wild misery. As they landed on the figure in the center of the room, her lower lip trembled and her head gave a faint shake. "No…"

"Yes," she insisted.

Del's face seemed to collapse. With a shove, the desk slid aside a little and the human woman all but surged out from behind it. A curtain rod fell from her fingers and she stumbled into the other woman's arms as if she'd been shot, almost immediately collapsing to her knees.

The other dropped to her knees as well, hugging her back tightly, possessively, shaking a little herself.

"Shh….shh, it's all right," she murmured. "It's all right now, my sweet baby. I'm here. I'm here…"

"God….Nan…" Shepard sobbed, as Anderson and Perri loomed in the open doorway, faces grim. _"Nan…"_

* * *

><p><strong>THE END<strong>

* * *

><p>AN: Yes! And that, my friends, is the end of DE2!

Yes, I know, kind of a cliffhanger, you hate me but…well, I can't help it. I hope the ending was somewhat decent and not entirely expected.

So, tomorrow will be the start of DE3, so if you don't have me set to your author alerts please make sure to look for it so you don't miss anything. DE3 is going to be the longest episode of Dark Energy yet, and a lot of harsh things are going to happen. Some will be Bioware's fault…some will most definitely be mine. As always, it will be left-of-canon.

It will be called Dark Energy: End of Days.

If you are prone to crying at ALL while reading stuff I highly suggest stocking up on a good amount of tissue for this next journey.

So…until tomorrow…adios, mah friends…and bring me that _horizon_.


End file.
